After my recent trip to Mother Juice, I figured it might be awhile before I was lucky enough to meet another outstanding, local, plant-based business.
WRONG.
Just days after my juice bar visit, I has the pleasure of chatting with Laurel Vachuis-the founder and mastermind behind al FreshCo. The incredibly delicious, locally sourced, organic, prepared vegan meal kits you can order to your door! I was totally impressed with her passion for healthy eating and her extensive background in agribusiness and food economics. We chatted about everything, from healthy food accessibility, how to educate others on eating well, the farms she receives her produce from and even our mutual agreement that nutritional yeast needs to be marketed better (seriously, such a misleading name!)
The adorably packaged meal kits run you about $15 and serve two people for lunch or dinner, and include options such as Delicata, Butternut & Kale Flatbread, Autumn Peanut Satay, Moroccan Tagine and a Dilly Golden Beet Stir Fry. Each ingredient comes pre-prepared and labeled with clear-as-day instructions that are impossible to mess up. And the coolest part about these kits may not even be the food-it might be how you get them. Deliveries to your door via bicycle can be made for an extra $4 OR you can visit Laurel at one of her trike locations, which is basically a small vendor booth/bike contraption Laurel carts around herself. Talk about sustainability! The kits can also be picked up at some cool local spots, such as Ula Cafe, which I am super grateful to have stopped at when I checked out the al FreshCo cart this week.
I was fortunate enough to take home the Dilly Golden Beet Stir Fry to try myself, and I cannot express how much I loved it. It included some millet and red merlot beans, which I had never heard of before, but truly enjoyed. Ontop of the grain mix, I stir fried an incredibly fragrant dill sauce into a beet, radish, kale mix, that was absolutely out of this world. The smell was so intoxicating, I had a hard time not eating half the veggies right out of the pan as it was still cooking. The thinly sliced beets cooked so beautifully, and mixed with the decadent sauce, almost gave them a buttery, silky texture and taste. I was so blown away by the amazing flavor, as even for me, beets can sometimes be tough to prepare. The kit itself gave me lunch and dinner for two days, so in my opinion, the portions are fairly generous.
So if you’re looking for convenient ways to get your veggies in every day, scope out the nearest al FreshCo location and get your hands on some of these truly delicious (and uber healthy) meal kits!
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