When the COVID-19 pandemic shut down restaurants and forced us all to stay home, many people turned to new hobbies to pass the time. For April P., who started as a HelloFresh customer just a few months before the pandemic, cooking became more than just a necessity—it became a lifeline.
Kitchen MVP April P. shows off her HelloFresh goodies!
In the years that have since followed, April has embraced her time in the kitchen, honing her culinary skills with the help of HelloFresh meal kits. From experimenting with dishes like Thai Coconut Curry Chicken to mastering the art of our Lemony Brussels Sprout Spaghetti, she’s discovered a new love for cooking and a willingness to try (and celebrate!) ingredients she once overlooked.
We sat down with April to learn more about her journey with HelloFresh and hear what cuisines and dishes she’s excited to explore next!
HF: To start, can you tell us a bit about yourself?
April P: I’m from northern Virginia and my husband is from Illinois. We call Washington DC home now, and we absolutely love it here. DC is a diverse and vibrant city –It’s not all politicians.
HF: Have you always enjoyed cooking or did your love for it evolve over time?
April P: I didn’t really cook much until my late 20s…and even then I’d cook just one day and I’d eat leftovers the rest of the week. So boring! After I got married I wanted to stop my leftovers habit. My husband got us a date night cooking class (swearing it was no commentary on my cooking!). That class helped me realize I could enjoy learning new skills and trying new recipes.
HF: Before HelloFresh, did you tend to cook, go out, or do a mix of both?
April P: My husband probably enjoyed cooking more than I did at the time, but there are a lot of great restaurants here in DC and we dined out a couple of times per week. Our apartment’s tiny kitchen didn’t make cooking fun or enjoyable. We called it a “one-butt kitchen”…there was only room in there for one of us at a time. There were no romantic cooking nights for us! We bought our “first and forever” home in 2023, and now we have a TWO-butt kitchen! We can finally enjoy cooking together and, when we do, it’s almost always HelloFresh.
HF: Tell us about how you got started with HelloFresh.
April P: My co-worker offered me a free box deal and we started using HelloFresh a few months before COVID-19 hit the U.S. We lived in a major city with over 50 full-size grocery stores, but during the first few months of the pandemic, it was difficult to obtain food. We ended up buying freeze-dried meals, and my parents mailed us things like bread and potatoes. We kept a list on our fridge of meals we could eat, based on whether or not we might be able to get certain ingredients. For several months, HelloFresh was our household’s only source of fresh meat and vegetables…it truly became a lifeline. When I say we’re thankful for HelloFresh, it’s about more than the fantastic recipes.
HF: Do you remember the first HelloFresh meal you cooked? What was that experience like?
April P: Our first HelloFresh meal was tacos…the Sesame Beef Tacos recipe, I believe. With our very first recipe, I learned a new skill (quick pickling) and tried ingredients that were new to me (sesame oil and sriracha). I truly couldn’t believe how good those tacos were, and that I had made them! Not long before that, we’d gone to a taco festival and had tried about a dozen different kinds of tacos. The HelloFresh tacos were better than all of them! I rarely order tacos in restaurants now, because I end up wishing they were more like HelloFresh’s tacos.
HF: Can you share a few ingredients from your meal kits that have surprised you?
April P: Ingredients that I’ve come to love because of HelloFresh? To name a FEW…roasted chickpeas, Brussels sprouts, cooked carrots, pork, curry, couscous, onions in a multitude of ways, halloumi, bulgur wheat, shawarma spice, and all things quick-pickled. (Seriously…where has quick pickling been all my life?) I figure if there’s any chance I’m going to enjoy an ingredient, it’s probably going to be in a HelloFresh recipe. So, unless a recipe has an ingredient we’re allergic to, we’ll give it a try. That’s led me to most of my very favorite HelloFresh meals (more on that below). And now, if we’re at a restaurant, I’m more likely to order a dish I never would have considered before. HelloFresh has really broadened my food horizons!
Comfort food at its finest: April serves Cozy Spiced-Up Meatloaves & Gravy
HF: How has HelloFresh helped your creativity in the kitchen? Have you had any “a-ha” moments in the kitchen?
April P: HelloFresh has DEFINITELY boosted my creativity in the kitchen. There are so many easy ways to incorporate veggies in interesting and tasty ways. We probably eat three times as many veggies now than we used to and with much greater variety. I recently made some rice and thought to myself, “How can I HelloFresh-up this rice?” That’s what my husband and I call it when we take a plain ingredient or dish and make it way better.
A big thank-you to April for sharing her inspiring story and for being such a loyal member of our HelloFresh family. We’re thrilled to be a part of her culinary journey and can’t wait to see what’s next on her plate.
“And whatever HelloFresh is paying the person who comes up with those pan sauces…” April adds, “…it’s not enough! I may or may not have licked a pan to get one last drop of pan sauce. How are those sauces that good? How?!”
April with her favorite HelloFresh dish: Lemony Brussels Sprout Spaghetti
Do you have a story about how HelloFresh has changed the way you cook, eat, or spend time in the kitchen? We’d love to hear it! Fill out our customer questionnaire for a chance to be featured on our blog.
