How to Vacation on a Budget With a Large Family

Have you seen all the ads for Daily Harvest pop up on your feed? I see them all the time and was really curious to check it out. This is not a sponsored post, I paid for all of the products in this review. While most of my family eats a standard diet, I have been eating a primarily plant-based and mostly gluten-free diet since 2017 and was excited to try Daily Harvest. There aren’t a lot of convenience foods on the market that fit the way I eat, so this could have huge potential for me! (I mean, shout out to chips and salsa, but I can’t eat that for breakfast every single day.)

Daily Harvest (D.H.) is a mail-order food delivery subscription service that delivers frozen convenience foods to your door. They are made entirely from organic fruits and vegetables without additives or preservatives. All of their food is vegan and naturally gluten-free. They offer smoothies, oat bowls, flatbreads, soups, harvest bowls, and a few treats like lattes and all-natural, dairy-free ice cream. So, that is the first big checkmark in the pro column: Daily Harvest is, by far, the healthiest convenience food I’ve ever found. If you are interested in trying their products for yourself, you can use my referral link to get $25 off your first order.

However, be aware that all of that organic goodness comes with a steep price tag. Their food is EXPENSIVE. But we’ll get to that.

I’ll start with the smoothies because they are the thing I was most excited about when I placed my order. Here we go.

The Smoothies:

I love the ease of smoothies because it’s the fastest way to take a portable meal with you. I don’t have to cook anything, I can take it with me in the car, it’s healthy, what’s not to love?

Well, in this case there’s the price, for starters. The D.H. smoothies cost $8 each, which is almost twice what I could pay to go buy a larger smoothie from a place like Panera Bread or Tropical Smoothie Cafe, and about 4x more than it costs to make several servings of a smoothie at home with ingredients I already have. Plus, you still have to add your own liquid to the D.H. smoothies, which is an additional cost unless you are using tap water. But, granted, Daily Harvest is using organic and sometimes exotic ingredients, like dragon fruit, so we’ll give them the benefit of the doubt. Are they worth it?

The D.H. smoothies arrive frozen, packaged in these individual serving-sized cups. When you want one, you dump the contents of the cup into a blender with liquid (I used almond milk), blend it, and pour it back in the cup. The lid has a hole in it for your straw. I loved that the cup was able to be re-used in that way, although the lids and the disposable seals on the containers are plastic, which might be a concern to some customers. Most of the packaging for their other products is cardboard or other compostable material, but the smoothie packaging seemed the least sustainable to me.

The verdict: Some of the smoothies were really good. My favorites were the Chocolate + Blueberry and the Carrot + Cinnamon (which was a surprise hit). However, most of them truly weren’t great, I’m sorry to say. I ended up adding a teaspoon of maple syrup to all of them, and most of them I still didn’t love. If you aren’t big on sweet things, then they might be right up your alley. But I do love sweet things and I didn’t like most of them, which shocked me because I love smoothies. Some of the flavors I tried were actually kind of nasty, if I’m being honest. (I was the most excited to try the Chocolate Hazelnut, which my entire family typically loves, but the D.H. version was truly gross. I couldn’t even swallow it and literally ran to the sink to spit it out. None of my kids liked it either. I don’t know if the ingredients we received had gone rancid before being frozen or if it was just not a good flavor, but I certainly can’t recommend that one, which is unfortunate.)

Since the ones we ended up liking had very simple ingredients we can replicate at home, I would say they definitely weren’t worth $8 each. We can throw some of our own blueberries, banana, spinach, and chocolate in a blender. So far, I have tried the Chocolate Hazelnut, the Mint and Cacao, the Chai and Coconut, the Vanilla Bean and Cocao, the Carrot and Cinnamon, and Chocolate and Blueberry. My kids also tried a few of those, but so far we haven’t found any the kids enjoyed. Because none of the smoothies we tried were very sweet, I think they are more suitable for adult tastes.

On the plus side, after I added maple syrup, I loved the Chocolate and Blueberry and the Carrot and Cinnamon, and would order those flavors again. I’d also heard good things about the mint flavor from friends, so I know many people like that flavor as well, but I found it to be oddly savory and bitter. I was told it tastes like melted mint chocolate chip ice cream. I promise you, it certainly does not. I do think it’s fun to order a lot of different varieties and try them, but it is a pricey experiment. Another thing to consider is that the calorie count on the smoothies varies wildly, based on their individual ingredients. Some of the D.H. smoothies are only 280 calories for the entire container, and some are over 500 calories. Just something to keep in mind.

Will I order them again? I do think I will order smoothies in the flavors I liked from D.H. a few times per year to keep in our freezer. Or at the very least, I may be inspired to make my own individual smoothie packs to freeze. I do like to have a healthy option available in a pinch, and I appreciate the use of organic ingredients without preservatives or processed sugars, but I still don’t want to spend $8 per day on breakfast for one person when I can make breakfast for my entire family for a week for less money than that. (I have written about how to do that in my budget grocery posts.) So, I will not be continuing a weekly subscription unless the price comes down substantially.

The Oat Bowls

I ordered the Apple+Cinnamon and the Cherry + Dark Chocolate bowls. The oat bowls were my favorite product from D.H.

10/10, do recommend.

I expected them to be okay, but it’s oatmeal, so I was expecting oatmeal and not anything spectacular. They were the only product that far exceeded my expectations. I loved the Cherry +Dark chocolate flavor. She’s not a looker, but she tastes amazing.

They cost $6 each, which, like all Daily Harvest products, is very expensive for what it is: one bowl of oatmeal that you still have to cook and could make at home in the same amount of time for much less money. But the cost in this case is probably on-par or just slightly more than you would pay in a restaurant for a bowl of oatmeal with whole fruit, chocolate, and other add-ins. And I will say that, as far as oatmeal goes, it was the best oatmeal I’ve ever had. I still think they are too expensive to justify eating every day, especially when it’s essentially just microwaved oats with frozen fruit, but they are very yummy. I would order them again to have on hand as an occasional treat.

The Flatbreads

Honestly, just say no to the flatbreads. Just…no.

I was really excited to have a quick dinner option made with healthy ingredients. The flatbreads look and sound amazing. I was ready to love them. I wanted to love them. I cooked them in my airfryer, which was quick and easy and gave the edges a nice crunch. But for me, the flatbreads fell, well, flat.

The flatbreads cost $9 each and are fairly small. I would liken them to the size of a kid-sized personal pizza at a restaurant. By comparison, Panera Bread offers flatbreads (although not vegan) for about $5. Do you really want to pay twice as much for something you still have to cook yourself? The small, pricey, D.H. flatbreads were enough for me for lunch, but would definitely not be enough food to make a larger person like my husband feel satisfied as a meal. I tried the Pear+Arugula, the Artichoke+Spinach, and the Tomato+Basil.

Um…I’m trying to think of something kind to say here, I truly am.

As a big plus, the ingredients are clean and healthy, like all D.H. products. The Artichoke+Spinach and the Tomato+Basil flavors were salvageable when I added a lot of marinara from my pantry. The Pear+Arugula, which was actually the one I thought I would like the best, was not in any way edible at all. (Maybe my expectations are just too high?) Three of my kids tried it as well, and no one could stomach it. It ended up in the trash, which was really disappointing. The flatbreads, overall, somehow tasted like nothing but soggy broccoli and microwaved spinach, even when the crust was crispy and they had plenty of other ingredients like artichokes or tomatoes. Except the Pear +Arugula, which was in a class all its own, and not in a good way. That one had a vegan imitation goat cheese of sorts on top of it and was extremely bitter, yet somehow also too sweet, and tasted a little bit like an ashtray.

I will not order the flatbreads again. What I would recommend doing instead, if you’re looking for convenience and don’t have the time or inclination to make something homemade, is going to a place that builds individual pizzas, like MOD Pizza or Your Pie, and asking them to make you a few veggie pizzas without cheese. Go home, wrap them yourself, and put them in the freezer. Or better yet, have them delivered. The ingredients might not be organic, but you will have twice as much food for the same amount of money, and it will taste better.

The Lattes

Possibly my surprise favorite?

I tried the Changa+Chocolate Lattes. There are several other flavors as well, but I wanted to try something familiar to me. I have no idea what Ginger + Tumeric or Matcha+Lemongrass latte is supposed to taste like, so how could I tell you if the D.H. version was good? I was told that the Changa+Chocolate is the D.H. version of hot chocolate. I know hot chocolate, so I feel comfortable reporting to you about it.

This product is a paste that comes in single serving-sized pods. You stir the contents into a mug of hot liquid (I used almond milk). It’s made of mushrooms and raw cacao, which made me very nervous and did not sound delicious. I do not like mushrooms. At all. Also, who puts mushrooms in hot chocolate?

Ya’ll.

It’s really good. The best version of vegan hot chocolate I have come across in the past 4 years, and it does not taste anything like mushrooms. It just tastes like hot chocolate. Again, it’s not very sweet, which seems to be a theme here, but in this case it works.

It costs $8 for three servings, or $2.67 per latte. Definitely more expensive than if you made it from scratch at home by just adding cocoa powder and maple syrup to almond or coconut milk, but this is the only D.H. product I tried this month that I think is probably worth the cost. It is similar in taste to something you’d find at a restaurant, has healthier ingredients, and is cheaper than getting Starbucks.

The Ice Cream

Daily Harvest offers Scoops, their own brand of vegan ice cream. I tried the Mint + Dark, Melty Cacao Chips and the Chocolate+Ooey, Gooey Midnight Fudge flavors.

The mint chip flavor was my favorite. The mint base itself is delicious and the ingredients were the healthiest I’ve ever seen on packaged, dairy-free treats. The ingredients are: organic coconut cream, water, organic maple syrup, organic 100% unsweetened dark chocolate, dried citrus pulp, organic spirulina, organic peppermint extract, dried peppermint leaf, himalayan sea salt, and vanilla bean powder. That’s it. No additional sweeteners or preservatives. I think this is more what I was expecting the mint smoothie to taste like.

I will say that because there are no additional sweeteners, the chocolate chips are very, very bitter and there are quite a few of them. I wish it had half the amount of chocolate chips in it (which is a thing I never thought I would ever say about anything). But even so, it was one of my favorite D.H. products, and I would (and did) order it again. It’s more expensive than the dairy-free ice cream I can buy at the grocery store, but the much cleaner ingredients and the fact that I don’t like the hassle of making homemade ice cream do make this one worth it to me.

The Midnight Fudge flavor wasn’t as big of a hit for us, though. It tasted like coconut and icy water with chunks of fudge running throughout. It’s not bad if you like coconut, but I don’t think it’s worth $9 per pint. My oldest daughter tried both flavors as well. She also loved the mint chip and didn’t like the chocolate.

That’s everything we’ve tried so far. If you’ve tried Daily Harvest, especially the soups or harvest bowls, let me know what you thought in the comments. And if you’re interested in checking it out for yourself, be sure to use my link to get $25 off your first order.

Curious about going vegan or gluten-free? Check out what I learned after my first 100 days of eating a vegan and GF diet. Plus, type in Vegan or Gluten-Free on the search bar on the blog for tons of healthy, delicious recipes!