A Week of Eating Organic Delivery w/ Ashley & Stuart

Ashley Lauren is the founder of Kinda Kind with Ashley Lauren, a brand focused on making kindness badass –  follow along at her Facebook page. 

There are consequences to eating like a jackass. I’m a vegetarian with a serious sugar problem. Stuart’s a junkfoodatarian with a serious coca-cola and chicharones problem. Together we’re stress eaters with various levels of tummy troubles who help keep our favorite convenience stores in business. I’ve been trying to get Stu and I on a diet for a while, doing my best to lure him in by making really excited faces and speaking terms like ‘accountability partners,’ ‘fast metabolism,’ and telling him fun facts (which I don’t know are true) about losing weight and getting healthy, such as ‘you’ll poop even better,’ but his excitement-lacking responses always revolve around the premise of being too busy, saying that maybe once things slow down he can have time to focus on it and that he’s already a great pooper.

No one paid us to write this article, but we did get some free food out of it from Thistle

Since things never slow down, for either of us, but especially Stu, I needed to come up with a different plan. So, I approached Stu with my painful bloated belly, looked down at his belly, and suggested we try Thistle, the raw, healthy, food delivery system. Stu said, “sure, I just don’t have any time to do anything with it, and I better not be hungry.” I skirted around his hunger concerns and just told him “it’s easy… they deliver!” and proceeded to reach out to the fine folks at Thistle and ask if they could hook us up in exchange for an honest to goodness review. They were on board and provided us a week of stress free, healthy eating and I hoped we wouldn’t starve.

Thistle has variety of different meal plans and prices, but ours was the complete 5-Day Thistle delivery, which includes 3 meals, 2 juices and 1 snack for each day. I did the vegan program, priced at $275 for the week. Stu chose the non-vegetarian program, which includes a little meat, priced at $285. As a vegetarian and animal lover who wishes people didn’t eat meat, but who is also a realist and understands that will never happen, I’m all about people at least consuming meat in the most ethically way possible. So I was happy to find out that they take their meat seriously and strive to serve it ethically. Their turkey is from Mary’s and pork is from Niman Ranch.

You can choose between two delivery times: 7-9am & 9-11am. Without giving it much thought we signed up for the later delivery time. We eagerly awaited for our food ’til nearly 11am, giving our appetites time to develop quite a fury, aka Stu got hella hangry. Once our two shiny silver bags of food arrived, I was all smiles, while Stu, whose eyes matched his belly in that they too were only full of concern, looked at me and said, “I want a cheeseburger” – and so began our five day Thistle adventure.

Stuart ready to get Thistled

Our first delivery included all the food for the following two days.

Monday:

• Breakfast: Summer fruit salad with watermelon, berries, peaches, chia & hemp seeds (little did we know we would soon become extremely familiar with those seeds – they’re basically the backbone of the program)

Monday’s Breakfast

• Lunch: Nectarine & fennel salad with red quinoa, arugula, pistachio & mustard-chive vinaigrette
• Dinner: Roasted romanesco & buckwheat bowl with walnuts, herbs and honey-lemon sauce
  • *Stuart’s non-vegan add-on: sous vide pork loin
• Snack: Orange Chia Pudding
• Juices: Verdance (Kale, Apple, Celery, Cucumber, Spinach, Parsley, Lemon, Ginger)

Ashley’s day 1 review: Everything was awesome, but I was starving by the time I cracked into my dinner, which was definitely my favorite meal of that day.

Stuart’s day 1 review: Was super hungry and hangry until after his Thistle lunch and his cheat meal (see below).

Stuart’s day 1 cheat: A small steak and tiny side salad. “But, it was small and carb free!” – BAS

Stuart eating foods that are naturally green

Tuesday:

• Breakfast: Coconut quinoa porridge with blueberries, blackberries, hazelnuts & shredded coconut

Tuesday’s Breakfast

• Lunch: Strawberry kale salad with radishes, almonds, sunflower seeds and granola “croutons”
• Dinner: Vegan chana masala with chickpeas, roasted tomatoes, brown basmati rice & herbs
  • *Stuart’s non-vegan add-on: Marinated chicken breast

Tuesday’s Dinner

• Snack: Orange Chia Pudding
• Juices: Autumn (Carrot, Orange, Turmeric) & Hunter (kale, celery, cucumber, spinach and parsley)

Ashley’s day 2 review: Breakfast was bangin’, seriously – it was super tasty and filling.

Stuart’s day 2 review: “Breakfast was weird but good, salad was weird but made me hungry, dinner was good, but weird. Why is everything cold?!?!?!”

Stuart’s day 2 cheat: A coca-cola and chicharones.

We switched to the 7-9am delivery time for the remainder of the week and got the call at 7:01am that our food for the next two days had arrived. (Much better timing for those who wake up hungry, and early).

I’m super excited to see what we got

Wednesday:

Wednesday’s Meals

• Breakfast: Chai spiced overnight oats with mulberries, almonds, chia seeds and banana
• Lunch: Mediterranean bowl with Lebanese fattoush, spiced hummus, carrots & millet
• Dinner: Spicy sweet potato and green rice burrito bowl with spinach, cilantro, black beans & pepitas
  • *Stuart’s non-vegan add-on: Pollo asado
• Snack: Peach Chia Pudding
• Juices: Spark (Orange, Apple, Lemon, Chia, Cayenne)

Ashley’s day 3 review: Dinner was awesome.

Stuart’s day 3 review: “Why are there so many weird seeds in everything?”

Stuart’s day 3 cheat: Stu got invited to some fancy schmancy restaurant launch, where he proceeded to eat an abundance of cheese, meat and so. much.foi.gras. And for that I threw him so.much.shade. The slangers of the cruelly bloated duck liver realized I was veg and kindly made me a small and tasty rice dish – so in all fairness, I kind of cheated, too.

Stuart is his natural habitat

Thursday:

• Breakfast: Housemade almond milk with vanilla granola, toasted almonds & berries
• Lunch: Tropical kale & coconut quinoa bowl with lime, red pepper flakes and cilantro-cashew dressing
• Dinner: Gluten-free ancient grain pasta with sundried tomato pesto & roasted vegetables
  • *Stuart’s non-vegan add-on: Turkey meatballs marinara

Thursday’s Dinner

• Snack: Peach Chia Pudding
• Juices: Amber (Apple, Grapefruit, Burdock) & Canary (Almonds, Tumeric, Dates, Vanilla Bean, Spices, Sea Salt)

Ashley’s day 4 review: Dinner was filling and definitely my favorite meal of the day. I love pasta, so was pretty excited to see some on their gluten-free menu.

Stuart’s day 4 review: “I mean it’s good, but I’m so hungry!”

Stuart’s day 4 cheat: A Coca Cola

Our final delivery arrived, we tore into the bags excited to see what would be our final send off.

Friday:

• Breakfast: Acai breakfast bowl with berries, raw coconut water, nuts & cacao nibs

• Lunch: Baby greens, glazed beet & roasted carrot salad with black lentils, parsley & citrus-tahini dressing

Friday’s Lunch

• Dinner: Rainbow pad thai with zucchini & carrot spirals, brown rice noodles, red cabbage & almond butter sauce
  • *Stuart’s non-vegan add-on: Thai chicken skewer

Thursday’s Dinner

• Snack: Chocolate Mousse

Chocolate Mousse

• Juices: Spark (Orange, Apple, Lemon, Chia, Cayenne)

Ashley’s day 5 review: This was my favorite day. Every meal was awesome and the pad thai was one of my favorite meals.

Stuart’s day 5 review: Liked the mouse!

Stuart’s day 5 cheat: A twix bar and a burger from a cafe.

Our final review: Having your meals planned out, delivered and healthy makes life easy. Stuart’s belly was less swollen, I gained a pound, which I attributed to the higher-than-normal caloric intake but my stomach didn’t hurt, which I attribute to the lack of crap food and sweets. If we both were to keep up with it for a month, I bet we’d see some drastic results. But even just a week here and there is a great way to jump start a diet or get your digestive system a break. And if you can’t afford a whole week’s worth of Thislte, just pick up a single meal and some juice to try it out.

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