You might find this hard to believe, but for the past ten years, I’ve cooked dinner the majority of the time during the week for my husband and I. Not frozen meals, or take out, but actually cooked dinner.

For me cooking dinner is a lot longer of a process than just the 30-60 minutes involved with the cooking. The time it takes to cook dinner every night really adds up and it starts at the planning. I would look up recipes for at least an hour on the weekend, make a list of the ingredients we needed and compare it to what we already had, go to the grocery store (in all fairness, my husband would get the groceries sometimes), cook, clean up (husband also did the dishes sometimes as well), and repeat. On average I’d say I spent at least 8 hours doing all of that each week.

I don’t mind cooking, I’ve actually gotten pretty good at it. I just mind doing the entire process ALL THE TIME. So lately I’ve been testing out alternatives when Terra’s Kitchen came into my life.

Terra’s Kitchen basically shortens the process for you. All you have to do is pick which recipes you want and cook the meal. They preselect recipes that you then get to pick from (so you aren’t paralyzed by all the recipe options on the entire Internet like I am but at the same time there are plenty of options to choose from), they do the shopping, they do a lot of the prep work (chopping, portions), and they deliver it to your door.

To show you the meal, I thought it’d be fun to do this post Pioneer Woman style, because she’s the bomb. If you don’t know what that means, basically it’s taking you through all the steps visually. I personally like to think of it as documentary or journalistic, but you get the idea.

So here we go. It took me maybe 10 minutes to pick the four recipes I wanted and check out online. Easy peasy. The vessel was delivered to my door the next week with all of the ingredients in it. It’s a bit heavy, but it has super sturdy handles on the side that make it easy to carry.

Each recipe comes with a full-color recipe page for directions. There was even wine and beer pairings for each recipe — a company after my own heart. But seriously, I love that they go to that next level to provide that because I have no clue what type of wine to pair with things, so the recommendation made it so easy! The recipe cards are already hole-punched so you can put them in a binder if you ever want to make them again — genius! Now, time to unload the box.

Each tray with ingredients has ice packs. If you are ever worried about your perishables being delivered and sitting outside, you definitely don’t need to with this vessel. It stays cold for a long time. Once you unload everything, you can put it back outside to be picked up!

I wanted to unload and get a visual of all the ingredients with each of the four recipes I ordered.

And here they are. I ordered 4 recipes that serve 2 people, but you can change that to your preference. For this photo shoot I decided to cook the pasta recipe.

But first, wine.

I don’t mind cooking, but cooking with a glass of good wine, now that’s enjoyable. I actually have this recipe to thank for my new found love for Syrah. It was the pairing recommendation for this dish and honestly, I don’t remember ever specifically having it and it was absolutely delicious! I’ll be having a lot of Syrah this winter!

On to the cooking. I recently learned that if you want to add a lot of flavor to your pasta you need to generously salt the pasta water. Apparently that’s how the authentic Italians do it. I’ve never met a grain of salt I didn’t like so, salt away!

Aaaaaaand bacon. Syrah. Bacon. We could just stop now.

Onions. I chose to chop them up even smaller, but that was a personal preference. You could have just added them as they were.

Now for the healthy stuff. Kale! I should note that the other three meals I got were all meat/veggies. This was the only one with pasta, so if you are doing the no/low carb thing, it’s easy to do.

Almost done!

Et voilà! Dinner for two! And actually me, my photographer, and my friend split this into three servings for lunch. And yes, with Syrah!

Let me guess, you want to eat this now don’t you?

I can honestly tell you that I’ve tried other companies similar to Terra’s Kitchen where you cook the meal yourself, but Terra’s Kitchen stands out in two important ways.

First is that the quality of the food is good. Really good. I made all four of the recipes and they were seriously DELICIOUS.

Second is that the recipes are easy and you can actually cook them in 30 minutes or less. Like I said before, time is a huge thing for me.

You know it’s good when your photographer says after the shoot, “I think I need this in my life.” I am all about making things easier on yourself, so if cooking dinner is a pain point for you, you should give Terra’s Kitchen a shot! Use this code —MEGBIRAM30 — for $30 off your first order!

Photos by Laura Metzler

This post was done in collaboration with Terra’s Kitchen. All copy and opinions are my own.

Special thanks to Naina for loaning me her gorgeous kitchen for this photo shoot. Just so you know, my kitchen doesn’t get enough light for a photo shoot!