It is the new year, which means many of us will make a commitment to eat better, lose weight, or get in shape. The hardest part of success is food, because most of us are honestly not very good at eating healthy. Eating salads and chicken wraps gets old quick.Meal services have taken off in larger cities to help with this. They typically provide meals either for pickup or delivery specifically designed to work in conjunction with a fitness plan to reach the goals while providing variety and better tasting food.These have been slow to take off in Little Rock. Healthy eating restaurants Good Food by Ferneau and Clean Eatery offer their food as weekly meal plan options after demand from the community. We recently were introduced to a new one, Crave – Fuel for Life, which was born out of the gym rather than the restaurant world.Crave came about in 2012 after founder Collin McReynolds found it hard to stay fit and eat food that still tasted good.”I am a foodie at heart, and I couldn’t find a lot out there to eat that was not counteractive to my weight loss goals,” McReynolds says.
She began working with her crossfit trainer and nutritionist Rene Hooper to develop meals that provided the nutrition goals while still tasting good.
“I developed one recipe at a time, adjusting ingredients while paying close attention to the nutrition to balance the dishes,” McReynolds says.
Crave began by providing meals for Hooper’s personal training clients, and eventually all the members of their gym, Align Health and Wellness. Now Crave says they are ready to open up meals to the public for either weekly delivery or pickup.
Blueberry French Toast
Butternut Squash Lasagna
We decided to give the meals a try for a couple of weeks and found the flavor surprisingly good. Crave focuses on a paleo menu, so no gluten, processed sugars, or dairy. Something I was a little hesitant about at first, but the dishes from Crave never made me miss it. I found getting started it was easiest to replace a meal a day at first.
The meal subscriptions come in 7-21 meals per week plans and you can pick from a number of dishes to customize your menu for the week, and come in two different sizes (light and full sized). Crave uses local ingredients as much as possible, sourcing from places such as Ratchford Farms, Freckle Face Farm, and North Pulaski Farms. The meals are delivered once a week, on Tuesday afternoons, to anywhere in the Little Rock area.
To kick it off, Crave is giving Rock City Eats readers 10 meals for $100 ($25 off) using the coupon code “newyear2016” at checkout.
