Quick Links:
- https://www.blueapron.com/
- Why Blue Apron? Price & Reviews. The Blue Apron deal was simply a lot better than the Hello Fresh Deal - that may vary by what specials each is running that month.
- Cost - With the intro special, just under $40 a week (3 meals for 2 people)
- Week One Meals
- Week Two Meals
- Week Three Meals
After 25 years of feeding half an army, many nights it is just Dan and me.
Two people.
It takes just as much time to cook for 2 as it does for 8. It takes pretty much the same amount of dishes as it does whether I cook for 2, or cook for 6. It takes me just as long to grocery shop for 2, as it does for 10. The grocery bill is lower (not much - we eat more expensive foods now.. steak night is much more regular now that there is just 2 of us...) and there are less bags to carry into the house (and less hands to carry them, so that evens out a bit too). But essentially I'm doing the same amount of work - for just two of us.
That's a difficult adjustment. I was expecting to have all this extra time when the kids were grown...
I've gotten better.. but for the first couple of years, I admit it was hard to summon the inspiration to cook for two people. And when I did cook, I still cooked as if half a football team might walk through the door any minute, so we had a freezer full of leftovers at all times. But it's been a couple of years, and I have started to find a better routine... slowly but surely.
Still, the meal kits intrigued me. While I can't see this being a way of life for us, since they were running a really nice introductory special, I decided to try it for fun. New recipes and foods to try, and we could experience a few meals with appropriate portions - a lesson we could stand to learn, seeing that our metabolism is not that of the teenagers we grew accustomed to dining with for all those years. :-)
The website is great. It's easy to sign up. The coupon applied automatically, and I was prompted to set our preferences. We're doing 3 meals a week for 2 people, for 3 weeks.
Each week when I login, 3 meals are automatically selected for us based on those choices. BUT - I can change to other meals if I prefer, there are always several additional options.
I can see the menu for the next 4 weeks - and make my selections for the entire month all at once. By clicking on the tab on the top left, where I have Signature Selections selected, I can see the WW Freestyle selections, for additional menu options.
"Blue Apron says on its website that it sources ingredients directly from farms, importers, and family-run purveyors. It takes pride in working with more than 100 family-run farms that use regenerative farming practices. Many of the ingredients they use are organic, but not all of them." I couldn't care less about Organic, I'm not really a fan. But local farms? There's my passion. If I'm going to overpay for groceries, at least let it support local farms. :-)
Although the website never prompted me to do so, I went and found the Blue Apron app for my phone. This not only allows me to follow the recipes from my phone, change our meal choices, and even see helpful cooking videos (things like how to safely slice round vegetables, etc - great for new cooks, and even for those of us who never took the time to do things properly...) and best of all, the app popped up a notification on my phone within minutes of FedEx dropping off our box of groceries.
Our first box arrived around 8:30 am on a Thursday.
I was wondering what would happen if the box was left here with the dogs - would they smell the beef inside and dig in? And if it was super hot, would the food hold all day if I was not home? This is where I am torn in two directions.
The packaging is great. I didn't leave the box outside long, I was here when it was delivered, but I did let it sit long enough to be sure the dogs had sniffed it to see what they would do. They weren't interested in bothering it in the short time it was there, which is encouraging. Our sons dog is staying with us, and she has massive food issues. She ate a dozen raw eggs when I let the egg basket sit on the back porch. If she had smelled beef - she would have been digging in.
The packaging was a lot. Probably not excessive, although it feels like it? I know some of it can be recycled, but I still found myself feeling guilty about all of that plastic. And what exactly is in those bags of ice? That's some super slimy water - some sort of gel maybe? Plus there is the bubble wrap foil... what am I going to do with that? It seems a shame to throw that out each week. On the plus side, at least I wasn't carrying plastic shopping bags out of the store because i once again forgot my re-usable ones...
I love that the meat was sealed in a second bag so there was no chance of juices leaking. I hate that the meat was double bagged and there was extra plastic. You see how you just can't win here. :-)
I do think this would have stayed cold all day - as long as it wasn't super super hot here. It was very well packaged, with two large bags of that gel ice stuff, which was frozen almost solid when I unpacked the box.
My plan is to review each week, posting what comes in the box, how the recipes work out for us, and a price comparison for what it would cost me to go to the store and buy these ingredients locally.
Week One
Week Two
Week Three
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