Any Blue Apron fans here?

[Nye Bevan]

We do it once in a while and today we had our second out of two Blue Apron meals this week. It's more work than I would normally do for a meal, but well worth it, absolutely fresh and delicious, and easily as good (and mostly better) than anything we would eat in a restaurant. Highly recommended!

[question everything]

1. For the uninitiated: what is a Blue Apron?

(besides the obvious..)

[Fla Dem]

3. It's a home delivery meal services

A bunch of them have sprung up in the past year. You sign up for a subscription service to have the ingredients and recipes sent directly to you home on a schedule you select. I think you can also select which meals you want. Not sure what the cost is because they don't disclose that unless you go through at least giving them your email address. Besides Blue Apron the one I've heard about the most is Plated. Links to both sites below.

Blue Apron
https://www.blueapron.com/

Plated
[link:https://www.plated.com/|

[Nye Bevan]

5. We get a package of 2 meals, each for 4 people, for $69 (nt)

[Fla Dem]

7. That's an excellent price! 8 meals at about $8.60 each. Thanks for the info. nt

[csziggy]

2. A friend loves them and recommended it to me

Sent me a "coupon" by email that would give me one free meal. I never cashed it in - they required a credit card before I could get my "free" meal and I would have had to jump through hoops to cancel or they would have sent me more meals that I would have been charged for. I haven't agreed to that kind of thing since the old record club days!

The other things that didn't appeal to me were that their sample meals were not that appealing to me; they did not let me refuse meals with ingredients I can't/don't eat; the meals as presented on their website seemed to be a lot of work for the number of servings (I tend to cook enough for a couple of days to reduce the amount of time involved);and the meals seemed very expensive considering that I can obtain most of the ingredients locally and create my own variations for a fraction of the cost.

On the other hand, my friend who is a professional, does not have the time I have to shop and prepare her meals. The Blue Apron option gives her everything she needs without her having to put in the time for planning and shopping so she can have the pleasure of preparing elaborate meals. Now that her kids are on their own she can better afford the cost than I can. As I said, she loves Blue Apron and is very happy with their service.

[Nye Bevan]

6. They are indeed a lot of work, much more than I would normally do to make a meal.

And to me the estimate they give for "prep time" is wildly optimistic. When they say "prep time" is 10 minutes it will take me closer to 30 to 40 minutes, but then again I am not the best or most experienced at things like dicing potatoes. But when we sit down to eat the fresh and delicious meal it seems totally worth it.

[Avalux]

4. Yes. I decided to try it a few weeks ago.

So far I've received 3 weeks worth of recipes/ingredients - 9 meals. I chose the seafood option and what I'm getting is one meal with seafood and the other two vegetarian. Everything's fresh and some of the recipes I probably wouldn't make on my own (like the pizza with eggs on it), but they turn out fantastic. Good use of spices too.

Another recommendation here.

[KamaAina]

8. Pizza with eggs on it?!

[Avalux]

9. I know, that was my first reaction too - but it was really good!

The pizza didn't have any tomato sauce - cheese base with ricotta and mozzarella and some other stuff. I made 2 little wells in the cheese and cracked an egg in each one. They cooked sunny side up.

[elleng]

10. NO TOMATO SAUCE???

OH NO!

Glad you enjoyed it, tho.

[jpak]

11. Here in Maine we call them Breakfast Pizza

except the eggs are scrambled.

Excellent - but high cal....

[Orangepeel]

12. I do hello fresh

I tried blue apron, too. They were both equally good, I think. The hello fresh recipe cards seemed a little easier for me to follow, so I stuck with them. Tonight I made shrimp lettuce cups with fajita vegetables, avocado and lime crema.