Meal Delivery Services #1: Blue Apron and Green Chef

Meal Delivery Services. You've heard of them. You pay an exorbitant amount of money, then a week later you receive a box. Inside the box you find recipe cards, enough insulation to heat a house, ice packs to keep all the food cold until next week, and perfectly-portioned ingredients to make the fanciest little dinner you've ever imagined. You've probably heard of Blue Apron-- they're the first I heard of. But this market is booming, and the list of options is ENDLESS.

So far I've tried Blue Apron, Green Chef, and Hello Fresh. I intend to keep trying them until there are none left!

I heard about Blue Apron at least 3 years ago, and as I have a weakness for all things easy, I knew I'd try it eventually. I was put off by the price (we're talking $60-$80/week for 2 or 3 meals), and my love of laziness was more inclined to spent that money eating out. But eventually I heard/realized that Blue Apron offered an extremely discounted FIRST WEEK. Like half off. So that's suddenly $30 for three meals for two people, which I was much more comfortable with. 

This was about a year and a half ago. I got Blue Apron for the first time-- I honestly don't remember what the meals were, but I wasn't that impressed. They were very heavy on the flavor-- and I'm not one who likes food to be bland by any means-- but the flavor was a bit much. Like, garlic, ginger, everything overload. It seemed like with each meal they tried too hard to be hip and creative, and ended up with dishes that were overly complicated and simply not pleasing to the taste buds. I will add that I was pregnant with child #3 at the time, so maybe my taste buds weren't that reliable, but my husband wasn't too impressed either! To make matters worse, when I went to cancel my subscription, I discovered that I hadn't cancelled in time and had already paid for the following week. At full price. Whoops. 

Well, I was done. No way was I going to pay $80 for meals I wasn't interested in ever again. 

But then, I learned that there are more than just Blue Apron. And they all offer extremely discounted "trial" first weeks-- and you can cancel at any time. I learned my lesson with Blue Apron about cancelling in time, and I won't let that mistake happen again!

Two weeks ago I got a Green Chef box. I needed to accommodate my gluten intolerance and my son's dairy and peanut allergies. When I signed up for Green Chef, I discovered that they are allergy friendly-- if you only have one allergy. They allow you to pick your food "preference" and give options like Gluten Free, Nut Free, Dairy Free, Paleo, etc. Well, I needed three of those and they only allowed me to pick one. So I chose gluten free, and decided I'd just make different meals for the kids on those days if necessary. Of course, in keeping with Murphy's Law, they sent me a gluten free Thai recipe. FULL of PEANUTS. They also sent a pork loin recipe, which was AWESOME. My husband and I devoured it.

With the Thai recipe, I wondered whether or not I should even cook it. My son's allergy is severe if he were to eat peanuts, but he's been around other people eating peanut butter with no problem, so I decided to make it and hope for the best. And, wouldn't you know... he had a reaction to the peanuts before I even finished cooking. I guess having them fragrantly warming on the stove was significantly different from sitting next to someone eating a cold peanut butter sandwich. Benadryl did the trick, and the recipe was delicious when we eventually got to eat it.

The third recipe was something called a "Buddha Bowl" which was vegetarian and SOUNDED delicious by the look of the recipe card, but... it wasn't my cup of tea. Of course it's the only one of the three that I actually remembered to take a picture of!

Needless to say, conclusion: in the future I'm going to be much pickier about being able to select allergens. 

Next up: last week I tried Hello Fresh, and this week I'm trying Home Chef. 

I'll keep you posted!