Does it deliver?

THE first thing to decide is where to have it delivered. You get your evening meal together with breakfast and lunch to the next day, so if you’re in a large office you have to decide between the chap on reception fainting at the smell of four or five takeaway cartons seeping splodges onto the splodge-coloured lino, or gambling on whether it will still be on your doorstep when you get home.

I scurried out when the call from reception came to find a well-stuffed brown paper bag mercifully not leaking or whiffing too much. I felt a little embarrassed explaining how I was having all my meals delivered to me at work for the next few days, like I was drawing them into my seeming retinue of cooks, shoppers and delivery people.

Tea was sturdy strips of lemon and cumin spiced chicken with broccoli and another box of Moroccan cous cous with a sizeable medley of peppers, onion and courgette. Even the broccoli kept the just cooked texture while the chicken had not undergone any of those strange factory process which soften its consistency to mousse.

If I was being picky, I’d say it needed more spice, but all in all it was fresh and substantial.

Day one breakfast was deeelicious.

A big trough of creamy porridge with squashy dates and dried apricots, it had a rice puddingy flavour.

The best breakfast I’ve had in years, going to work afterwards seemed very cruel.

Lunch – jacket spud, salad and cottage cheese – sounded dangerously diet-like until I clocked the huge piled-up shovelful of cheese. A little bland, but vastly superior to any of the other limp diet lunches.

Back home and it was Thai Green Curry and rice and chargrilled vegetables on the side. I didn’t like this one much. Broccoli, onion and thick wedges of courgette in a hot, green but runny and not very coconutty sauce. The peppers were pleasingly smoky, though.

Thursday’s lunch was a thick slice of tortilla, layered with sliced potatoes and melted blue cheese, and salad. I wouldn’t normally have picked tortilla out, but this was a pleasant surprise. The basil and tomato linguine, which emerged as penne and a rather economical smear of tomato sauce, was disappointing. Reheated pasta is a tricky dish to pull off, even when it’s smothered in billions of bacon cheese and cream calories which, obviously, wasn’t an option here.

The biggest eye-opener was how much it declutters your life, not even having to pick up a ready meal from Sainsbury’s, and the portions were bigger and more filling than I’d normally have when trying to be healthy, which cuts out the need to be running out for 40 to 50 lite snacks every day.

Eatwell might not be as blissful as a hot greasy pizza, but it’s a delivery your body is bound to love you better for.