More pictures were taken on my Instagram account.
As you all know, I'm a fan of food and there are very few speedier ways to my heart than feeding me. However I can be a bit snobby and I love cooked dished and rarely eat ready meals, so when Ilumi* offered to send me some packets of their vegetarian/vegan selection I was a bit hesitant.
Ilumi are a company that specialise in allergy free food (specifically nut, gluten and milk) in ready meal format (or in some cases to go along with rice you have cooked yourself). However they pride themselves in using natural ingredients and honest labelling. I'm not allergic to any of their focus ingredients but as someone who has been successfully going vegan for a bit (if I've eaten anything non-vegan in the past month it wasn't intentional) and has a soya intolerance informative labelling is something I can always get behind.
They sent me three different packets to try: Geng Gari Curry, Vegetable Biryani, and the Vegetable & Chickpea Jalfrezi. They did also offer to send me the Harira Bean Soup if my taste-buds were up for something spicier, which I declined as I'm very firmly a korma gal and take guacamole over salsa any day. I ate them over the past weekend and took the final packet into work to see how it would work out and about.
First up was the Geng Gari Curry which I had Saturday and picked first because I love me some butternut squash and coconut milk. I cooked some rice which I patiently waited to cook so I could get the main part cooked (all the food I was sent was cooked with in two minutes in a microwave, in the packet itself). The taste itself was quite simple, as I was expecting, but I still gobbled it down.
Sunday we had the Vegetable & Chickpea Jalfrezi, which was my favourite as it was absolutely delicious. Not much more to report here. I had it with rice, if you must know.
On Monday I took in the Vegetable Biryani to work as this is the one that was marked as a 'full meal' and didn't recommend that rice was added to it. Because the preparation is only two minutes in a microwave it made it the perfect bitty to take to work. However I like a big lunch so I did nip to Tesco's to purchase some bits and bobs to go along with it. This was actually a bit spicy and makes me wonder how hot their hot meals must be...
I certainly don't have the budget to be eating ready-meals on the regular but if your budget is high enough or you require gluten free meals then these's are definitely worth looking at. Personally I'd buy these if I was going on holiday in a self-catering hotel and wanted to throw a few things in my suitcase. I read in the reviews on their website that some people like to take these packets camping with them (obviously they've improvised on the preparation, unless fancy camping microwaves are a thing?).
Can we also take a moment to appreciate the beautiful branding!?!
Morag x
* Ilumi sent me these for my consideration, but all opinions are my own.
