I’m sure you guys are all anxious to know more about the birthday weekend I had planned for my fiancée, but for that you’ll have to have another day of patience.

I first want to tell you more about “Smartmat”. Smartmat is a “concept” founded in 2007 in Sweden by a woman called Kicki Theander. The concept existed out of shopping bags filled with ingredients to deliver at people’s homes… I bet you are now thinking “there already exist lots of initiatives and concepts like this”. Yes, which is indeed true, but what makes Smartmat ‘s way more interesting is that they also include very easy to use recipes for these ingredients. Also important to know is that by the end of the week you’ve used up all the ingredients (except maybe some garlic gloves), so you won’t have to worry about leftover ingredients.

A while ago a man called Anders Åsarby who according to his name you can already expect he’s Swedish, thought this might also be a very nice concept to bring to Belgium (as he’s already living here for 20years). So together with Kicki and Dirk De Maeyer they started thinking how they would be able to launch and get this concept going in Belgium. I can say they did a REALLY good job as this is a well thought true concept!! (from the portions, to using everything that is in the bag as the easy to use recipes)

It was actually a friend of mine (Stephanie) who had brought my attention to the existence of Smartmat and I’m glad she did 🙂 :-). The reason for it, well I think the most asked question in every household around the world is “what are we going to eat tonight” (it drives my fiancée crazy). Smartmat actually solves this problem for you as you just subscribe via the Smartmat  website, decide the way you would like to pay, the times you which to receive a package (every week, every 2 weeks, etc…) and don’t forget to mention allergies, after that Smartmat  does all the thinking for you. Every week they put together a package of ingredients for a week (including vegetables, meat fish, …), add the recipes how to prepare the dishes (explained in around 7 easy steps) and get them to you in the beginning of the  week (after working hours + they let you know day before at what hour they’ll pass by). Only one thing for you left to do and this is preparing the dish. Again, it is very well and easily explained, everybody could do it… I feel like specifying a name, but that’ll only get me into trouble, so let’s just call it “people who can’t cook” could even prepare it. There is indeed a list of ingredients you have to foresee at home (like salt & pepper), but find the list here

So the beginning of last week I had my first package delivered

The menu of the week was (and you have to follow the order they put it in the ‘week menu paper’ as some ingredients turn bad quicker than others…) BTW, they were all ready to eat within 30-40minutes

–          Lam moussaka à la Smartmat : This came with a rucola, carrot salad with a yogurt /honey/wine vinegar sauce

–          Fish with orange sauce and wild rice

–          Spring pasta with porc filet

All 3 dishes were nice, but my personal favorite of all 3 was the Spring pasta, after that the moussaka and last the fish.  The only reason why the fish is last was because of the rice, I only like eating rice with Asian dishes, otherwise it always remembers me of the million times I had to make calf blanket with pilau/pilaf rice and I hated that dish (still do).  I also prepared every dish how they described it (besides the pasta, but still only used the ingredients they provided)

I really like Smartmat because they give a healthy menu that changes every week (some dishes might come back obviously) and I’ll keep doing this, every 2 weeks that is, otherwise the restaurant owners will start striking that I don’t visit them anymore  🙂 🙂

In case you do have some leftover dishes you can in that case either share them with “thuis afgehaald” or you can follow the indications that can be found on “week menu paper” how to freeze the dishes or find out how long you can keep them in the fridge.

OK, now I have tried to convince you enough , I do know that I always write a lot…. but when I like something I really get so excited and want to make sure I convince everybody and want to make sure I don’t forget telling something

P.S.: This is not for people who don’t like everything , as you don’t know in advance what you’ll be eating…

Enjoy!