Date Box Club is a monthly subscription that delivers you G-rated date night ideas and everything you need to complete them.
Date Box Club sent us this box for review purposes. (Check out the review process post to learn more about how we review boxes.)
The Subscription Box: Date Box Club
The Cost: $35.00 per month + $1.99 shipping
ACTIVE DEAL: Limited Time Only! Buy 3 get 4 FREE, no coupon code is needed. No coupon needed - just use this link.
The Products: Everything you need for a creative date night activity. The activities are designed for couples in committed relationships but are not romantic or “adult” in nature.
Ships to: US. Shipping is free.
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This envelope sits on top of the blue-paper-wrapped activities in the box. Inside, there's information about the theme of the box, plus directions as to how to use the items in the box to create a fun night in.
This subscription advertises itself as being G-rated, but this month's "South of the Border" theme did get a bit, uh... spicier... than usual!
NorPro Deluxe 6" Tortilla Press - Retail Value $14.54
The first activity for the night involves making your own tortillas and tortilla chips. How cool! My partner, Alistair and I are both huge fans of chips and salsa, so this snack was right up our alley. I've never seen a tortilla press in real life, let alone owned one, so I was really excited to see this kitchen gadget in the box. It's a nice quality, too. The joints are a tiny bit rickety, but I think that's more about making sure the contraption can fit neatly over the balls of tortilla dough than it being poor quality.
Gluten-Free Amarillo Maseca, 2.2 lb - Retail Value $2.22
Of course, we needed some flour to make the dough with! This is a sizable amount of masa flour—we only used two cups during our date, so the bag is still around 3/4 full right now. It's nice to know we have some to use on another night of cooking!
Herdez Salsa Casera, 7 oz - Retail Value $1.52
The box also included a little half-sized can of salsa. Hot salsa is a little extreme for me, so I was pretty ginger about how much I got on each chip. It wasn't the greatest salsa I'd ever had, and I might've preferred something a little fresher, but for the sake of this box, I think it was a cute touch and perfectly tasty!
There are technically two steps to the chip-making process—making tortillas and then making those tortillas into chips. Making the tortillas involves making dough out of water and masa, then squishing balls of dough in the tortilla press. I was surprised by how low-mess this process was. The masa flour sucks up the water you add to it immediately, making for a really dry dough that doesn't stick all over your hands. The box provides two big zip-shut plastic bags that they recommend sandwiching the dough balls between to help make them easier to get out of the press. We still had to be pretty patient with the flattened dough, though—it's not delicate, but when it's squished so thin, it tears pretty easily.
As you flatten the dough balls, you pop them on a flat, lightly oiled pan for a few minutes to cook. Our stack isn't the prettiest in the world, but I've got to say, they tasted pretty good. And the cooking masa left the kitchen full of savory, warm smells.
We ended up saving a good number of the tortillas (about 6) in one of the zip bags from earlier. What a great excuse for a taco night! About four of the remaining tortillas (and some other odds and ends that had torn off during the pressing process—hey, they were basically triangles already!) got cut into triangles and popped into the oven to bake. There were also instructions for frying them, but we figured we'd go the healthier route (...with the easier clean-up, haha). I have a feeling that these chips were just slightly too thick before they hit the baking pan. Alistair said they were good, but that there was something slightly stale-tasting about them. I had to agree—they were hot and cooked through, but they retained a smidge of moisture that didn't feel like it belonged in a chip. They were also a bit denser than we were used to in commercial corn chips.
All of that said, we really enjoy cooking together, so this was a great activity for Alistair and I. And because Alistair is a real perfectionist when it comes to mastering recipes (his grilled cheese recipe is honed with clinical precision...), I have a feeling our future corn chip attempts will be better and better. I'm actually more excited to have learned to make tortillas! If I could eat tacos every day, I would. And now, maybe I will...
Date Box Club Spin the Pepper Game - Retail Value $8.00?
After our cooking adventure, we settled in on the couch to explore what I kept referring to as the "pepper cards". I had sort of assumed these would work like the conversation-starting cards we've gotten in previous boxes, but oh no. Oh ho ho no, my friends.
This game works like Spin the Bottle. You set the cards face-down in a ring around the tiny plastic pepper. Then you and your partner take turns spinning the pepper and picking up the cards that the pepper points to. If I spin, Alistair picks up the card and does the action on the other side. If he spins, I pick up the card and do the thing. And boy, do these actions get seeeexy! Some cards are playful, some are sweet, some are downright sensual. I'll admit that we spent most of the time giggling our way through each card. Well, mostly it was me giggling about how awkward I felt doing these romantic things on command and Alistair giggling at my giggling. I'm not a prude by any means, but there is something about having to do something convincingly super sexy on command (especially after a quaint night in the kitchen) that's always going to leave me laughing at myself a little bit.
We did have a lot of fun with this spicy little game, though! It was definitely unexpected from this box, which has been pretty tame until now, but it was perfect for the two of us.
The Verdict: It's hard to knock a subscription box that ends with a li'l makeout session, haha! I thought this edition of Date Box Club was a really cute break from this subscription's relatively wholesome norm. Alistair and I love cooking, and we had a ton of fun with the tortilla press. At first, I thought the game was going to be a little corny, but it turned out to be a lot of fun—not just because of the PG-13 tasks, but because laughing through the awkward moments together helped us feel all that more comfortable with one another! That said, if you subscribed to Date Box Club because of the G-rated focus (they do say in their FAQs that "DateBoxes are NOT themed around sex & romance") you might be a little thrown by this particular box.
To Wrap Up:
Can you still get this box if you sign up today? No. Sign up before the 1st of the month to ensure you get that month's box.
COUPON - Use code dbcfreeship to get free shipping on your first box!
Value Breakdown: This box costs $36.99 after shipping, but according to my estimated prices, I got about $26.28 in value inside. While I would've appreciated a few more items (or maybe a larger deck of cards for the Date Box Club-made Spin the Pepper game), I do think some of the value of this box comes from the curation involved in it.
What do you think of the September 2017 Date Box Club?
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