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Blue Apron

I mean, our food prep probably takes 30 min, but I am talking 30-45 minutes of mise en place and then cooking for blue apron, plus since we're playing zone, anything that you can do with one hand gets bonus points. We do a lot of crockpot or grilling or things like that, we save things like roasted brussel sprouts or chicken parm for weekends when we have more time to prep and do like tacos, bbq chicken, sweet and sour meatballs on our work nights. But we aren't home until 6 most nights and then have to have the kids in the bath by 7-730. If I am spending an hour making dinner (that let's face it, one of them will reject outright, one of them will eat two bites and throw on the floor and one might eat half a portion of) then I feel like I just can't be bothered.
 
ChicdeaC said:
I mean, our food prep probably takes 30 min, but I am talking 30-45 minutes of mise en place and then cooking for blue apron, plus since we're playing zone, anything that you can do with one hand gets bonus points. We do a lot of crockpot or grilling or things like that, we save things like roasted brussel sprouts or chicken parm for weekends when we have more time to prep and do like tacos, bbq chicken, sweet and sour meatballs on our work nights. But we aren't home until 6 most nights and then have to have the kids in the bath by 7-730. If I am spending an hour making dinner (that let's face it, one of them will reject outright, one of them will eat two bites and throw on the floor and one might eat half a portion of) then I feel like I just can't be bothered.
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yeah, ITCbaby has been pretty cooperative by going to sleep early after daycare or hanging out in her bouncer while watching me chop stuff.

definitely could be more challenging with roaming childs
 
I wasn't trying to come across as accusatory about time management for those who had kiddos, and I'm sure I will mirror those thoughts when I have children. Mainly was interested at the DINK peeps and what they were making that takes so long.
 
Deacsfan27 said:
What are y'all making that takes substantially less time than at least 30 minutes start to finish anyway?
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My stuff takes probably 30 mins to an hour but I make it to last 2-4 days. So the following nights are 2 mins microwave time. Don't have time to dedicate 45 mins every night to food prep even though blue aprons are a lot of fun once in a while. Disclosure: not dink and have a roaming toddler
 
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Deacsfan27 said:
I wasn't trying to come across as accusatory about time management for those who had kiddos, and I'm sure I will mirror those thoughts when I have children. Mainly was interested at the DINK peeps and what they were making that takes so long.
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yeah, my go-to meals are lots of pan-roasted veggies, grilled meats or tofu... not a lot of craziness happening there. blue apron got me to expand horizons a little bit and if nothing else, helped me come up with new variations/sauces for a lot of the go-to things I was already doing.


off the top of my head, my favorite recipes that I can remember are:
Fried tempura acorn squash tacos
indian-spiced chickpea burger with pickled something and a good lemon garlic yogurt sauce
a farro salad that had grapefruit and golden beets in it (really unique flavor combo that I wouldn't have put together on my own)

It introduced me to new ways to prepare beets, one of which I actually enjoyed (also, I learned I like golden beets more than purple ones), and had me use celeriac for the first time. Never, ever would have picked one of those up at the store.
 
For me the killer is $50/meal. I can get a pretty good dinner pulled together for $20-30 and that extra adds up.
 
DeacDiggler said:
For me the killer is $50/meal. I can get a pretty good dinner pulled together for $20-30 and that extra adds up.
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Are you talking about the 4 person box, I hope?
 
We've used Hello Fresh for like a year now and like it. We get three meals each week delivered from there. The cash outlay is more than the grocery store, but when we factor in the value of our time for one of us to go to the grocery store to buy shit to cook, we come out way ahead from an overall cost perspective with the Hello Fresh. It is like cutting the lawn; yeah I could do it cheaper myself, but the value of the hours to me that it takes me to do it is much higher than what I have to pay someone else to do it.
Some meals are better than other, but we like the variety. The kids will often eat it as well if we don't tell them what it is.
 
Used the service a long time and really liked it. We had some trouble with produce quality with Blue Apron and I think we just got kind of bored with it after a while so we used Hello Fresh for a few months and liked that service a lot too.

Both services were great for us overall and while more expensive than the grocery store, the price was offset by not having to go to the grocery store or think through meal planning for a week. We cut the service off shortly after having the baby and haven't reactivated.
 
ImTheCaptain said:
yeah, ITCbaby has been pretty cooperative by going to sleep early after daycare or hanging out in her bouncer while watching me chop stuff.

definitely could be more challenging with roaming childs
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I've got roaming kids and I am lucky to woof down a piece of bread with peanut butter on it. While standing. Not a sandwich, but piece of bread. Once they go down, I usually grab some way too late to eat cereal or yogurt or something.
 
well at least now we all know which posters are going to die of cancer
 
we liked it at first. priced favorably compared to grocery stores here. we ended up stopping because the veg options were lame, we're trying to eat less meat. the environmental impact from shipping and the crazy packaging was also a reason. the farmer's market near our house is actually priced really well compared to blue apron/grocery store which made saying goodbye easier.
 
We used it for a few months and still use some of the recipe cards. I had issues with veggie / herb quality. They would reimburse but it started to get annoying.
 
Doofus were you just cooking for one when you did it? Were the portions ridiculous is so? Looks like everything is made for two at least, not that I'm opposed to leftovers.
 
I've done hello fresh and blue apron. Like hello fresh better. Ingredient quality similar, but prefer the hello fresh recipes. Prep is usually much simpler with hello fresh
 
I was just looking at their website and I see you can do some customization (veg, pescatarian, avoid specific meats) but can you request meals that adhere, even loosely, to a set macronutrient profile? Like, a meal should have no less than 30 g protein, 25 g fat and no more than 800 calories, that kind of thing? Some of the items I saw were very friendly for me to hit goals, like the salmon, others were not, like the butternut squash empanadas.
 
Of course, we do the online ordering from Harris Teeter, so I don't spend a lot of time at the grocery store either, so I didn't consider it saving time there.
 
I've done Hello Fresh, Blue Apron and Plated. I think I like Hello Fresh the best out of all. The thing that annoyed me about Blue Apron is that you couldn't just get any combination of the six recipes available for the week, only certain combos were allowed.

It's a godsend in NYC. Not that much more expensive than going to the real grocery store and 100x less effort
 
I was reading an article on CNN this weekend about blue apron. Undoubtedly they have had an insane amount of employee workplace violence and threats. It was something like one major threat (like a shooting) per week.
 
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