REVIEW: Mosaic Foods Online Vegan Frozen Meal Delivery Service

I decided to try Mosaic Foods vegan (and vegetarian) online mail order frozen meal delivery, after seeing some positive reviews online.

I signed up for the 18 meal plan, the biggest plan they have (and the best value after discount and free shipping). I filtered for vegan only meals (although they have vegetarian options too, I'm strictly vegan). You have to choose a recurring order option; there is no one time only option like there is with MamaSezz vegan mail order meals. So, I chose to reorder every 4 months, and then paused all order until July. You can customize and pause shipments whenever you want, but you know how that goes. I'll probably cancel my subscription and then restart it when I am ready for more.

First, lets talk about the cost. My total order cost for the 18 meals I chose for my box, after discount and free shipping, was $176.78. That works out to $9.82/meal. Let's just round up to $10/meal for argument's sake. For a mature adult male of my activity level and energy needs, one meal is about one serving. More petite and sedentary people might get two servings out of one of these meals. They fill an average sized bowl. The meals range from about 400 to 600 calories each. However, one of my meal choices was a "4 serving" Thai peanut curry that would probably actually serve two hungry people of my size. So, I kind of got 19 meals for the price. One of the meals was a soup. Another was a smoothie, which I'll try tomorrow morning.

The meals are completely pre-made and frozen, shipped with dry ice (although the dry ice was gone by the time the box arrived in Wisconsin, by truck from New Jersey, so I might not order these meals in the middle of the summer). You microwave or bake them, and eat. I fortified the soup with some brown rice I had on hand, and generally I think you can make these meals go farther by adding rice or pasta to them.

The cost of these meals is competitive with other pre-made meal delivery services, and the cost can be justified by the minimal prep time to eat them. They are convenient.

The meals are pretty tasty too, thus far. I have not gotten through them all yet. These will be nice to have on hand in the freezer sometimes when we are too busy or too lazy to cook plant based vegan meals.

I endorse them.

The End.

A Recipe: Tofu Cacciatore with Mushrooms - Vegan Whole Food Plant Based with No Oil and No Salt

This is a whole food, plant based, no oil/salt version of one of my favorite Italian meal recipes. It's conventionally made with chicken but super firm tofu works just fine because the flavor actually comes from the thyme and mushroom wine sauce. The end result is delicious.

1. In a large bowl, combine a half cup of whole wheat flour and a half teaspoon (tsp) each of the following dried herbs: leaf or ground thyme, leaf rosemary, and garlic powder.

2. Rinse (but don't dry) one block (~15 ounces) of super firm,* high protein tofu and chop it up into one inch cubes.

3. Add tofu to the large bowl containing the flour and herbs mixture and toss until tofu is lightly coated. Then remove the coated tofu chunks to another container and discard any residual flour mixture.**

4. In a large skillet, add one cup of veggie broth and one cup of red or white cooking wine, along with the same quantities of the herbs used in step #1. Bring this to a simmer on medium heat.

5. Add the lightly breaded tofu to the simmering broth and turn the heat to medium low. Note that the breading on the tofu will begin to thicken the broth. If it gets too thick and starts to scorch or stick, add more veggie broth to dilute as needed. Stir occasionally. Meanwhile...

6. In a separate frying pan, add a half cup of veggie broth and a half cup of red/white cooking wine, along with a half tsp of leaf thyme only. Bring this to a simmer.

7. While the broth in step #6 is heating up, chop up half an onion and about 8 ounces of mushrooms (white or baby bella work well). Add these to the simmering broth in step #6 and cook until onion is translucent, about 3-5 minutes.***

8. Pour the mushroom sauce generated in step #7 over the tofu in the large saucepan and turn off the heat to the saucepan. Mix everything up a bit and let it sit about 5 minutes to blend the flavors.

9. Enjoy this as a standalone dish or serve over rice.

*Note: Super firm tofu is the dense, high protein kind that is firmer than extra firm and doesn't crumble. Extra firm tofu will probably disintegrate in this recipe. Seitan (wheat gluten) or textured vegetable protein (soy protein) would also work in place of tofu in this recipe.

**Note: The tofu can be cooked in the wine broth without breading it. However, this will result in a thinner, more runny broth. Some cornstarch can be added to the mushroom sauce near the end of cooking to thicken it up before adding it to the tofu in the saucepan. Experiment!

***Note: You can also use a mixture of diced zucchini and mushrooms to add more whole food vegetable content to this dish. Simply reduce the amount of mushrooms used relative to the amount of zucchini. Another variant is to add a diced roma tomato to the mushroom sauce, if you want to add more of a classic Italian tomato  sauce flavor to this dish.

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