“Little Seeds at Home” themed five-course meal boxes are bringing a sense of occasion to lockdown home dining.
Little Seeds is a Stone restaurant which since opening in 2016, has specialised in seasonal, locally sourced quality food. Jake, Sophie and the team have constantly evolved their restaurant, and as we locked down, they launched their “Little Seeds at Home” weekend boxes.
Each weekend has a different theme with a tailored menu, and this weekend it was the Spanish themed “Some time in San Sebastian” box.
Before we delve into what you actually get in the box, let’s tackle the elephant in the room, the cost of the box. At £30 per person for a vegetarian box and £35 per person for a meat-based box, these certainly aren’t cheap, especially if you’re comparing these to the cost of a takeaway. However, that’s not what these boxes are trying to emulate, so please read on to learn more about why this is more than a takeaway substitute.
The boxes are delivered on a Friday and are good for three days; this gives you flexibility on when you use the box.
What’s in the box?
Here’s a quick video of us unpacking our box:
- Recyclable and oven-ready tubs, each individually numbered – In our case, we had 16 numbered ingredients and a tub of pea shoots.
- A “cook by numbers” instruction sheet providing very simple and easy to understand directions on cooking each course
- A little postcard thanking you for your order from Sophie and Jake
- A sheet with next weekends box
- A bottle of wine to match the meal – the wine is included if you purchase 2 boxes.
The ingredients are good quality, well labelled, plentiful and very well prepared by Jake and his team.
What the box makes
Each box makes a five-course meal, and for our Spanish themed “Some time in San Sebastian”, we had the following:
- Iberico Ham CroquetasGilda (Manzanilla olives, hot peppers & anchovy sticks)
- Galician Octopus, chorizo & lemon
- Herb marinated Flat Iron Steak with a chimichurri sauce, purple sprouting broccoli and Patatas Bravas with aioli
- Smoked Idiazabel cheese, crackers, walnuts & quince jelly
- Basque cake
- A bottle of red wine as we had a box for 2 people.
Here are some of the pictures of the dishes we prepared:
How easy is the box to prepare?
The ingredients are provided cooked, partially cooked or raw depending on what they are. The instructions that come with the box are very well laid out with simple reference to the pre-numbered ingredients and guidance on adjusting timings to suit your taste.
One of the beauties of this approach is that you can tailor your preparation to eat at a pace that suits you; if you want to take a break between courses, nothing is going to become spoiled or cool down.
The instructions really are “cooking by numbers”, they are simple, easy to follow and suitable for a novice – even I could follow them, and I’ve previously tried multiple times to cook things by lightbulb when I can’t operate the oven!
From a timing perspective, each course takes around 5 to 10 minutes to prepare, which makes for a nice and steady pace.
Our thoughts
Mrs ALBOS and I couldn’t wait to try the box, so we decided that Friday night was lockdown date night and this ready prepared menu meant the decision making about what we should have for dinner was already made.
As we say at the top of this article, this isn’t a rival to a takeaway; this is a restaurant-quality five-course meal to enjoy in your own home. We spent two hours cooking, eating and enjoying each others company as we talked about the various ingredients, dishes and any changes we’d make to suit us personally. The Little Seeds at Home box is an experience, certainly not just some food to fill your tummy.
The box allowed us to try dishes and ingredients we wouldn’t normally have considered. It was my first time trying octopus, and it was delicious! The Little Seeds social media accounts are a great place to watch ahead of you getting your boxes to learn a bit more about the various elements included and to see some of the completed dishes.
There are plenty of ingredients within the box for each dish; this made for really good portion sizes, and those with a small appetite may even be able to split a single box between them.
The only thing missing from the box was a helper to wash up the plates at the end!
Whilst the box costs £70 for a couple of meat-eaters, with a bottle of wine included, it brought something to our lockdown life that had been missing. A proper feeling date night filled with conversation, excellent food and time spent away from binge-watching Netflix. The box isn’t going to replace a cheeky takeaway but if you want a special meal at home, then head on over to the littleseedsathome.com website.
How to Order
You can view the menus and order your box by visiting the littleseedsathome.com website.
[box type=”info” align=”” class=”” width=””]Disclaimer: We were provided with the “Little Seeds at Home” weekend box for free to give it a spin and give our honest feedback.[/box]
