Bison Swedish Meatballs (image cred: Factor 75)

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I wish I had an unlimited amount of time to cook. I’d prepare two or three fantastic meals completely from scratch every day of the week, in addition to wild and lavish whole-hog blowouts on the weekends. Everything would be perfectly balanced, varied, interesting, nutritious, but most of all incredibly delicious.

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Putting dinner on the table every night presents logistical challenges.

I solve them with a bag of magic kitchen tricks. If you know anything about wizardry, it’s that the most powerful magic always comes with a price, and that’s why I pull the “let’s order in” card out of that bag only now and then. Same goes for the “ready-made meals from sexy and trendy high-end grocery stores” trick, and it goes double for Bob Evans mashed potatoes. If Bob Evans mashed came in a 5-pound bucket, I’d be in front of one right now, with a spoon. No, wait. Screw the spoon … I could eat that stuff with my bare hands. I mean, have you had them? I think they’ve been scientifically designed to be irresistible. No, seriously. Scientists. In a laboratory. And that’s the price. Ordering in or picking up something ready-made that’s good for you is difficult.

MiLam was recently introduced to Factor 75, a Chicago-based meal delivery service.

F75 makes well-balanced, super-tasty, ready-to-heat meals with fitness and nutrition in mind. If time constraints make cooking difficult – or if you just need a day off now and then – but you want any prepared meals you buy to be as good for you as they are appetizing, Factor 75 is a superb way to go. What their website has to say about their philosophy, approach to nutrition, and their attitude about eating in general resonated with me, so when they asked if I’d sample a few meals, I was eager to give them a try. Thank you Factor 75. Here’s what I thought:

In General

Their meals are refrigerated – not frozen. They’re on par with the best prepared foods you can find at a few high-end groceries that specialize in them, definitely. However, most prepared foods have nowhere near the same attention to nutrition, and generally you can’t get them hand delivered.

The three meals I sampled were Shepherd’s Pie, Elk Stroganoff, and Steak.

Shepherd’s Pie with Field Greens

Lighter than my expectations. One reason: instead of white potatoes, the pie is built on a bed of cauliflower mash. Another reason: the filling, rather than meat with a vegetable accompaniment, is more like a meat-and-vegetable duet. Fine with me. I added a light sprinkling of salt to bring out the taste of the sweet potatoes, which I found to be an attractive surprise. They were creamy, but they had a varied texture – not the uniform smoothness that would come from having been whipped, but the more rustic texture that you’d get if you mashed them by hand. That velvety potato richness is essential to the comfort-foodiness of a Shepherd’s Pie. The Factor 75 pie strikes a balance between comfort and nutrition.

I ate half of the Shepherd’s Pie without reading the ingredient list, to avoid a bias. In looking at the list, I couldn’t believe how many heavy-hitting veggies I was eating: kale, beet greens, Swiss chard, and spinach. Please believe me when I tell you that the flavor image that string of words brings up is not what the pie tasted like. It just tasted like a nice, rich, vegetable medley. Also surprising: ground lamb. Many modern cooks use beef in their “shepherd’s” pie.

Listen to Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony as you enjoy your pie. Pair it with an English ale or an inexpensive red Bordeaux. Or live it up a little and pair your pie with Johnny’s Love Juice. Love Juice contains gin, which is not only compellingly good for you … you could make a logical case for preferring it over water. Don’t argue with me about this without checking the facts first. (It also contains amaretto, which is, sadly, just empty calories. But a guy’s gotta live, amiright?) If the lamb, love juice, and Ludwig van’s evocation of walking in the environs of early 19th-century Vienna don’t put you in the mood, you need a refresher course in Romanticism.

Elk Stroganoff

Two words: hell yes! If I were to use six words, it’d be more like, “Hell yes! Can I have more?” Half-way through nuking it, it smelled so fantastic, that I could hardly wait to get to it. F75’s Elk Stroganoff has a refreshingly interesting flavor profile – a little sweet, a little savory, with a lot of depth. It has plenty of sautéed mushrooms, which adds both flavor and texture. The elk has the character of a good pot roast: tender, moist, nicely melded with the sauce … satisfying. The sauce has a gorgeous, reddish-brown color that is as tasty as it is attractive – and it has a full-bodied consistency that retains its creaminess without separating when reheated. A traditional stroganoff doesn’t survive a reheat especially well, so I was curious to see what was taking the place of sour cream in this sauce. I was stunned to find that the dish contains no dairy at all, but coconut milk instead. I also would not have guessed in a million years that I had been eating brown rice pasta. I could eat this meal all week and I’d serve it to guests in a heartbeat.

This would pair well with red wine; a glass of red is good for you. But you might want to consider an Absolute Royal Fuck. Aside from the well-documented health benefits of drinking whiskey (I mean, for starters, it’s naturally fat-free and anti-bacterial) and cranberry juice, I won’t even bother elaborating on the reasons every guy should make pineapple juice part of his daily regimen. Listen to Aaron Copeland’s Rodeo during dinner. If this isn’t elk and whiskey music, then there is no elk and whiskey music.

Steak, Cauliflower Mash, Tomato Salad, and Asparagus

The steak is an ample serving of an eye of round, roasted and sliced. Eye of round is naturally lean, which means it’s easy to overcook. I was happy to see that it wasn’t. Nevertheless, it’s frustrating how quick and easy it is to overcook cold roast beef in the microwave. Cold cooked beef has a particular flavor that is, I think, due to the temperature of the fat. If you don’t want it to have that “cold” flavor, it has to be thoroughly heated, but heating it without cooking it is tricky.

For me, the cauliflower mash is the star of this meal – the kind of thing I’d like to reverse-engineer a recipe for so I could serve it to guests as a side dish, or bring it to a potluck. I found the asparagus to be quite tasty: grilled, pencil thin, just the right amount of crunch, peppery. I also felt that the coolness of the fresh tomatoes complemented the heat of the peppery asparagus.

Pair this with red panties. Or, if that’s not quite your style, pair it with a Red Panties. Red Panties contains vodka (if you’re lucky). Vodka tries so hard to lay claim to health benefits, but all it can come up with are things like “causes relaxation” and “was administered as an anesthetic to wounded soldiers before emergency surgery on the battlefield.” However, it’s an excellent disinfectant and it’s actually good for your skin. So if you ever have a Red Panties tossed in your face, remind yourself of that. Aside from a splash of OJ, a Red Panties isn’t going to add any nutrition to this meal. It’s simply going to get your heart pumping. You know what else will get your heart pumping? The perfect sonic backdrop to a steak-and-Panties dinner: reggae/ska funk-rock, of course. Listen to Beef.

Summary

The level of thinking that Factor 75 has given to nutrition is phenomenal. They’ve made smart nutritional choices that include an impressive variety of superfoods, lean proteins, low-glycemic carbs, heart-healthy fats, and antioxidant-rich spices. I like all of that. My own expertise, however, centers on whether or not it’s enjoyable food. Yes, it absolutely is. On those occasions that I want a prepared meal, I’d be happy to get them from Factor 75.

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