I like coriander (cilantro) in my dishes. However, Pizza Hut Japan introduced recently introduced a limited time “Too Much Coriander” pizza. I think it is too much since the taste of cilantro is overpowering and you will not taste anything else if you put that much on a pizza.

I still would like to try if it is available the next time I visit Japan.

My sister-in-law has the gene that makes cilantro taste like dish soap. She said this is what hell looks like.

Last year, I lent some money to my friend’s company. He returned the principle but wanted to give me around $800 of interest. I told him just to buy me some meals. He paid for a couple of lunches last week, but we decided to check out Tomahawk Tuesday at Fleming’s Steakhouse. Basically, you choose between bone-in steak or have them slice it for you. Additionally, you get two salads, two sides, and two desserts. The total cost for the meal is $150.

So, we went to the Fleming’s at Fashion Island in Newport Beach last night, and got the sliced porterhouse. It was expensive but everything was really good. At my insistence, we got the steak medium. The ribeye was great, but I think the filet was a bit overcooked. I probably should have gone with medium rare, but I really do not like chewy steak. The salads and the sides were really good, and dessert was great.

This was the last one in my two-week trial, and easily the worst tasting one. It was some kind of chicken salad and did not include many carbs. I ended up eating it with two whole wheat tortillas. I did not like the taste nor the texture of the food. Barely two stars out of five.

Anyway, I am done with Factor 75. Unless the long-term pricing is under $10 per meal with shipping, I will likely never order from them again.

Since I already cancelled my plan with Factor 75, I am posting the last three meals for completeness. The website also will not let me access my previous orders so I cannot post the website images and nutritional information. Both these meals were mediocre so about 2.5 to three stars.

Shrimp. All my meals so far have been with chicken as protein. There were only six medium shrimps, and they were overcooked in the microwave. There was garlic butter on top of each shrimp which melted during heating. You had to mix the entree side very well to coat the shrimp and pasta with the butter. The broccoli was again soggy and mushy.

The mashed potatoes were so salty that it was hard to eat. It reminded me of the soup at our work cafeteria; sometimes it was so salty that it burned your throat. Additionally, there is an interesting choice of vegetables with just mushrooms and nothing. I like mushrooms so it was fine with me. There was some shredded cabbage under the chicken too. The name of the meal was Dijon Chicken Thigh or something similar, so I expected some mustard taste, but it was overwhelming. I do not like mustard so I should have skipped this entree, but I did not look at most of the selections that week. Another reason why I chose to cancel the subscription.

One more meal left from my first order of twelve meals. It is some kind of chicken salad but there is no carbs. I need to buy some bread or tortilla to go with the meal.

Sigh. All these subscription deals make it difficult or tedious to leave. Since I have decided to stop ordering from Factor 75, I tried canceling my account online.

On the home screen, if you scroll to the bottom, there is a button to deactivate my plan.

If you click that, a pop-up window appears.

If you click on no thanks, you are brought to another screen with three chances to change your mind. I really do not like the $48.56 off comment because you must order three more times, or order about $300 of food and shipping to get that discount.

If you want to cancel anyway, another pop-up window asks for feedback and another chance to change your mind.

I chose something under Subscription Flexibility saying that I was just testing and not ready to commit. If you then click deactivate now, I believe your plan is closed, but you do get one more chance.

The deactivate my plan button is grayed out until you write something. However, it does say I have no more deliveries, so this page is probably optional. I will give them my overall comment, which is not worth the price per meal at six meals per week.

After all that, my account is finally deactivated. I do think the last step is optional, so you only must click on cancel four times. The $13.49 per serving for six meals per week does not include shipping. That adds almost $2 per meal since shipping is a flat $11 each week. Again, I am okay with the meals, even though some are tastier than others, and the serving size is too small. It is just not economical for me not that I am retiring and have lots of time to cook.

Here are the eighth and ninth Factor 75 meals I tried. I had both on Saturday for lunch and dinner.

This is the typical Factor meal with a chicken breast, some sort of mash, and vegetables, usually beans or broccoli. The flavor was good, but there was way too much sauce and not enough mashed potatoes. The right side of the container was basically chick and a sauce slurry. The chicken breast was good sized, but I thought it was too thick in the middle and the meat was not too tender. The potatoes looked like they were from a Marie Calendar’s frozen meal after heating because too much sauce mixed with too little potatoes. It is a 3 star out of five meal

For dinner, I had chicken with penne.

Unfortunately, Factor decided to use the small penne, which turned out too hard after cooking. I think if they had used the regular sized penne, this would be a pretty good meal. In contrast with the above meal, there was not enough sauce to cover the entree so there was a lot of dry pasta. Portion size also seemed small; I was starving this morning after having two Factor meals for lunch and dinner. This was also a 3 stars out of five meal.

I go back to my consistent complaint with Factor. I just spent about $25 on two meals and I am very hungry the next day. That seems ridiculous. Sure, it was delivered to my door, but the portion sizes are too small, and the meals are not that healthy if you look at the fat/saturated fat/cholesterol/sodium content. I could have a large pizza delivered and eat three meals at that price. I already paused the meals for this coming week. I will wait until I eat the three remaining meals, but I am almost certain I will cancel the service.

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Oops, I was looking around the Factor website to see how I could cancel or deactivate my account. I went through the entire process while taking screenshots and ended up just cancelling right now. The next post is a summary of all the screens. Again, I am certain the next three two meals will not change my mind.

Since I stopped the meal deliveries, I will probably only have twelve of the Factor entrees. There is only 20% discount on these meals, so they cost $12.62 each including shipping. I started with this one:

So. Much. Chicken.

This meal was fairly good, but it is difficult to mess up grilled chicken breast. The chicken flavor was decent, but the potato leek mash tasted salty. The chicken also only had grill lines on one side. Did they boil or steam the chicken breast, then put it on the grill briefly just to get the visuals? The vegetables were too soggy. I have been setting the microwave to 80% power for 2:30. Perhaps I am cooking the entree too long, so the vegetables are overcooked.

This was 3.5 stars out of five. Pretty filling but not worth $12.62.

I actually ate these on Monday and Tuesday night but forgot to do a review post. I did remember to take photos while I ate though.

Meal #5 was excellent. The flavor was good, though the green beans were bland despite all the garlic. The chicken breast was pretty good sized, but I ran out of the pasta before finishing the chicken. The mushrooms added a different layer of flavor than the chicken, and the entree was filling. This was a solid four stars out of five.

I do not know why the pasta is reddish in the website photo. The actual entree had white pasta.

The final meal in the first box was the taco bowl. I am okay with Mexican food but not a fan of the smell of cumin. It appears that this entree had a lot of cumin.

The website photos always look like there is a lot of food, when that is not true for most of the entrees. This is true for the taco bowl too.

First, it was impossible to open the sour cream cup. I managed to rip it down the center which makes it hard to pour. It reminded me of a Chipotle burrito bowl. I ended up mixing everything in the large tray compartment. With the name like taco salad, I thought there would be something crunchy, but that is a tostada. To accompany the meal, I heated up a whole wheat tortilla on the stove and made an actual taco. For me, the seasoning was too strong, and this was the first meal I did not finish completely. For me, this was two stars out of five.

The taco salad was the last meal of the first box. I got another box yesterday (Wednesday) and ate one of the meals for lunch today.

Weekend reservations at Ding Tai Fung in South Coast Plaza are impossible to get. Each time you go to the reservation page, all the weekend timeslots are full. After trying a few times, I noticed that future dates open one month in advance for reservations. Since February only has 29 days, today is the day that March 30th becomes available.

I set my alarm for midnight and went to the reservation page right away. I managed to get a noon reservation for four at 12:01 am. At 12;02 am, there were no more noon reservation slots. At 12:07 am, the 12:15 pm timeslot for March 30th was filled too.

Sigh. I will end up cancelling the reservation since I probably will not be able to find three other people to eat with me, especially if they have to drive from Los Angeles to Costa Mesa.

I got the second delivery for Factor 75 prepared meals. There is no taco bowl this time. Since you only get a 20% discount on the second box of meals, each of the six meals comes out to $12.62 including shipping. From tasting all six meals this past week, they are mostly tasty, and an okay deal at $8.50 per meal. At over $12? That feels too expensive for me. I have put a hold on the third week and will decide later if I want to get a few more boxes at 20% off, or just cancel the account.

Here are the meal selections:

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As a finance guy, I wonder what their margins are, and how that affects pricing. Is it worth it to offer someone like me 50% off and make a smaller margin versus not getting any sales from me at all?

Since the Factor meals have a best before date of February 28th, and I will get six more meals that day, I had two entrees today.

For lunch, I had Beef Bolognese, and this was a three-star meal. In the photo below, you can see some of the noodles were a bit dry. I have the same issue when microwaving Stouffer’s lasagna. Entrees are not packaged consistently, and any exposed noodles/pasta become dry and hard after heating in the microwave. The sauce had a lot of flavor and was tasty. However, there were not enough noodles, so I was just eating the Bolognese sauce by itself at the end. Finally, the zucchini was too wet after cooking and rather bland.

My parents came by my house after church to drop off some soup. It is my favorite soup which contains beef, tomatoes, and potatoes. Other versions also have lots of cabbage, but I prefer the simpler version. I was going to have it for dinner but decided to have another Factor entree.

This entree was by far the best Factor meal so far. You can see and taste the grill marks on the chicken breast. I got a knife this time and actually cut up the chicken. The mashed potatoes were also very good, but maybe a bit salty. The vegetables were also well done, served with mushrooms and a light sauce. All the previous entree vegetables were pretty naked, as if they were just steamed. I would give this meal four and a half stars and I could eat this every night if the price was lower.

After four meals, the food taste is definitely much better than Freshly, and something I can eat every night. As I mentioned in the first Factor post, you do not get very much food for the money. For meal #4, it was close to 350 grams instead of the usual 315 grams. Thirty-five grams is not very much, but the grilled chicken did seem more substantial, and I felt more fulfulled after eating as compared to the previous meals..

I believe I have a chickn tetrazini and some Mexical taco bowl left from the first order.

Based on a friend’s recommendation, I signed up for a prepared meal delivery service called Factor 75. I have tried a couple of them before, the last one being Freshly. I did not like the food at all from Freshly. Maybe they were trying to make the meals too healthy? I remember them as dry and tasteless.

Here is the first meal from Factor 75:

And how it looks in real life out of the microwave oven:

The taste was good, but you can see from the nutritional information, there is a lot of saturated fat and sodium. The serving size was smaller than what was pictured on the website. I followed the microwave heating instructions exactly but did not plate the entree and ate it out of the plastic container. The chicken and vegetables were seasoned well and tasty, but the creamy cauliflower rice was a bit salty. The chicken thigh meat was tender, and I wished there were more meat in the meal. There was a layer of oil at the bottom of the tray, likely from whatever sauce they used, and contributing to the high fat content. I did finish everything though. For a microwaved meal, I would give it 3.5 stars out of five.

Would I buy it again? Let us look at the cost. Since I am living by myself, I signed up for six meals per week. There are plans from four to thirty-six meals, with the same shipping cost.

That works out to $15.32 per meal including shipping. For the first week, there was a 50% discount on the meals, so my order was about $8.58 for each meal. The next week is more expensive because the discount is only 20%. At full price, the meals are much too expensive. I feel with delivery, $10 per meal seems reasonable. Of course, if I go with the thirty-six-meal plan, the cost per meal drops to $11.27 so maybe the service works out for larger families. My order next week will be $12.63 per meal.

That was just one out of six meals. I will have to taste all six to see if I want to continue the subscription in March.

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For comparison, here is a local restaurant that sells prepared meals for $10 each and up. Someone in my church cell group brought this for dinner a few weeks ago. Sure, the selection is smaller, and you must go pick it up, but the food is good, and the price is right. I am sure there are lots of restaurants that offer this.

I am going to order a few meals from here once I can walk and drive.

Ever since taking the Six Pack Revolution (SPR) program last summer, I have been making a lot of frozen fruit smoothies. My freezer is full of frozen fruits from Costco and Trader Joe’s. However, while I was staying at my sister’s house, my parents tidied up my kitchen and I could not find anything. I am also out of unsweetened soy milk that is used as the base for my smoothies.

Since I do not have much food in the house after being gone for a month, I needed to make these smoothies. For the first one, I used a pre-made vanilla protein shake as the liquid base. Since it had a strong vanilla flavor, it made my smoothie taste weird. For the next one, I used water but also mixed in some powdered milk. This also tastes strange. I am likely accustomed to a specific taste profile after making and drinking smoothies for the past six months.

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In my freezer, I have Rubbermaid containers containing0 strawberries, mangos, blueberries, bananas, peaches, pineapples, oranges, and a berry mix with mostly raspberries.