Dear Blue Apron, I think I’m in love

It seems like every conversation I’m having with people these days revolves around Blue Apron and just how awesome it is. What is Blue Apron you’re asking? Well, let me tell you all about it. By the way, my husband is probably smacking his head as he reads this. I think he’s heard me go on and on and on about it with too many people. I just can’t help it. I think they’re great!

So it’s basically a subscription based food service where you get all the ingredients you need to cook 3 delicious meals each week. You’re given the exact amount of ingredients you need to make the dish and nothing more so nothing goes to waste. All you need to have on hand is oil, salt and pepper. There’s a vegetarian and a meat plan. From a difficulty standpoint the meals are pretty straightforward to prepare with beautiful recipe cards that are easy to follow. You do have to be prepared to do some washing, chopping and peeling. Freshdirect meals, these are not.

The subscription is super flexible so if you need to take a break for a couple of weeks because you’re out of town, have visitors or just can’t possibly do anymore cooking for a while then that’s fine, blue apron have got you covered. Oh and another nifty thing they do is email out the menu in advance of next week to tell you what’s on the menu. So if you’re just really not keen on some of the recipes you can opt-out for that week too. The ingredients come beautifully labeled and packed in a box with ice packs to keep them cool and fresh till you get home from work to pick them up.

Having a vegetarian husband I saw this as a great opportunity to learn about cooking techniques and vegetarian recipes I might never have tried. Let’s face it, we all get into our ruts and just end up making what we know works. Blue Apron forces you to step out of your comfort zone, learn, try, succeed and sometimes fail. While blue apron isn’t necessarily cheap I do find it slightly cheaper than many dishes that we get delivered once you factor in taxes and tip for delivery. It also puts a cap on how often you might order in but more importantly how often you might eat out each week. For me, it’s those sit down meals at restaurants that can start to get expensive. Those glasses of wine with dinner or dessert to share really do add up. You’re not going to save a mint by subscribing to blue apron but every little bit helps right?

My only complaint so far are the time it takes to prepare the meals. They say it takes 35 minutes on average but it takes me slightly longer. When you’re trying to spoon ravioli mixture onto pasta sheets with tears rolling down your cheeks because you’re just so hungry or cut things up into the size of matchsticks you do question what the heck you’re doing. But more often than not it’s worth the effort and maybe I’ll get faster at those sorts of things as time goes on?

Here are some photos of the dishes I made over my first two weeks of blue apron. The featured photo is the Summer Corn & Vegetable Chowder, one of our favorites so far.