I decided to try Blue Apron...

A few months ago I had what I thought was a great business idea; delivering fresh-made meals to people's houses that they just have to pop in the oven and voila they can feed their family a healthy, homemade meal with minimal effort. Many people told me this service already exists and it's called Blue Apron, so I decided to check them out. Blue Apron does not make your meals for you, but it does all the grocery shopping and meal planning for you. You pick the delivery day and they deliver the ingredients for 3 meals complete with the recipes and cooking instructions right to your front door (in a refrigerated box so you don't have to worry about being home to get the delivery).  It's $20/meal (for 2) which is probably more than we'd spend in a grocery store but definitely less than we'd spend in a restaurant so I decided to sign up and give it a try!

My first delivery came around 4:00 on Monday (it was guaranteed to be delivered by 8pm but I was excited it came early enough for me to make one of the meals for Monday's dinner). The ingredients were all fresh and labeled so I could easily look at the recipe cards and tell which ingredients went with which meals. The package even came with 2 giant ice packs that are reusable!  Very exciting, Blue Apron should mention this as part of their marketing because I was almost as excited about the free ice packs as I was about the food. 

The first meal I tried was the summer soba salad, it took me about a half hour to prepare all the ingredients, cook the noodles and put everything together.  It was a delicious meal and definitely nothing I would have ever tried to make on my own.  I was worried about the portion sizes being too small with some of these meals (tomorrow is stuffed peppers and you literally get 1 pepper each with no sides...definitely not enough food for Joe!) but there was tons of pasta to go around here.  I ate less than 1/3rd of the dish and was full so I have plenty left for lunch tomorrow! 

We'll see how the next few meals go but after meal #1 with Blue Apron I am pretty impressed with the service and definitely think it's worth the cost!