Customers like healthy meals to go

#Middlebury #HealthyMeals

By MARJORIE NEEDHAM

Theo Anastasiadis of Pies & Pub, right, helps Patrick Ney with his healthy meals to go order. Ney and his family enjoy having healthy meals easily available. (Marjorie Needham photo)

Pies & Pub co-owner Theo Anastasiadis has plenty to be happy about. The state now allows restaurants to operate at 100 percent capacity (within COVID-19 guidelines), the warmer weather has customers flocking to the patio, and his new healthy meals to go program is proving extremely popular.

Customer Leighan White-Miller describes the meals to go as “delicious and nutritious.” She joined the healthy meals program when it started and was there picking up her weekly order, meals for herself and her husband for Monday and Thursday, when we stopped by Pies & Pub recently. She said her favorite entree was salmon, and her favorite sides were spaghetti squash and Brussels sprouts.

Pies & Pub launched the new healthy meals program February 1. It offers fully prepared, individually packaged meals – salads, entrees and side dishes. The entrees and sides are fully cooked and then cooled and kept at the proper temperature until they are picked up. Customers take them home and warm them in the oven for 10 minutes at 350º. Meals also can be reheated in a microwave.

Patrick Ney also was picking up meals – for himself, his wife and their son – the day we dropped by. He said, “It’s easier to eat healthier without all the meal preparation. Busy people want to eat healthy.”

Ney was picking up eight meals – lunches and dinners. He said his family eats salads for lunch and then fish or chicken in the evening. He said the meals are really convenient on nights when he wants to eat sea bass and his family prefers to eat chicken. Ney said signing up for the program was a “no-brainer.”

Offerings change from week to week, with a list of the week’s dishes texted to customers on Sundays so they can place their orders for the week. The week we visited, customers could choose between two salads, Superfood Salad and Power Greek Salad. Dinner entrees were grilled salmon, grilled chicken breast, baked cod, baked sea bass and grilled herbed shrimp. Sides for the week (each dinner comes with two) were kale, spinach, cauliflower, brown rice, baby carrots, spaghetti squash, and Brussels sprouts.

Participants who sign up to order meals on a weekly basis receive a discount. They place their orders each Sunday for Monday through Friday. Extra meals are usually available for those not in the program, but people who want one need to call Pies & Pub at 203-598-7221 to check on availability. The discount is reserved for those who are signed up for the program.

Anastasiadis said he started the program because he is interested in fitness and eating healthy, and he believes there has been a need for a program like this. Tom Palomba at Thrive Sports and Fitness had mentioned area gyms with healthy meals programs, and it seemed to make a lot of sense for customers like Otis Jemal of Middlebury Fitness on Facebook, a health and wellness site, who was buying trays of entrees and sides and then assembling meals at home. Thus, the healthy meals to go program came to be.

To join the program, call 203-598-7221, leave your name and cell phone number and wait for a text message.