Hi! Y'all know I just got back from vacation, and you probably know what a Process it is to get back into a routine after a month away, especially when you've got two wee ones who need to be re-sleep and life-trained, one of whom is starting school. I thought this might be the perfect week to try out Blue Apron, using a free week's worth of meals that a friend passed along. (FYI -none of this is sponsored. We're just blogging it how it is).

You know the deal with Blue Apron, right? It, like a few other services out there, including Hello Fresh, aims to take some of the work out of the weekly feeding frenzy by providing pre-portioned ingredients and recipes for 2-3 meals per week. I'm not totally sure what this says about me, but when I mentioned I had a delivery coming up to my friends, they replied, to a person, "That doesn't sound like you." Because I do tend to try to do my own meal planning, or because I stubbornly refuse help all the time? But, as you know, dinner is a total pain in the tookus. And recently, an entire thread on my mommy listserv was devoted to the dinner question, and lots and lots of families reported using Blue Apron. So, with nothing to lose, we signed up for our free week.

Our box arrived on Wednesday, bearing the contents for three meals: Fresh Linguine with Roasted Fennel, Green Coconut Thai Curry, and Grilled Cheese with Mushrooms. Yeah, the last one was kind of a bummer for me, too. I mean, I could probably come up with Grilled Cheese myself, right? But still, everything was adorably packaged, right down to the little packet of sugar needed for a dressing, and I was, immediately, less stressed about dinner. I was also pretty impressed with the specificity of the directions, right down to the pictures. Then, as I was walking home with the kids yesterday, it occurred to me that the set up was perfect for Bret, who is more of a recipe follower, to make dinner. (I'm more of a recipe glancer and "improviser," involving lots of hoping for the best). So Lou and Bret chose which meal they wanted (the pasta) and got to work.

It was adorable. But also, a good call that Bret went first. Blue Apron is really specific about how to construct the meal. I am pretty sure that I would have declared it all poppycock and gone my own way, but Bret dutifully followed instructions. At first, we both thought the pasta was going to take Forever, but the directions clearly laid out what to do while various ingredients were prepping and cooking, and when exactly to start on something new, so everything integrated pretty seamlessly at the end.

The finished product, plated by Lou, was truly delicious.

Over dinner, we discussed the pros of the scenario. We all liked the food, and Bret was a fan of the instructions. He felt like he learned some new techniques and tastes, and he was pretty into that, as well as impressed by how well laid out the directions were such that everything came together at the end - and all in about 30 minutes, as advertised. And, he pointed out, while Grilled Cheese is certainly on our radar, we've never added mushrooms to it, so we might be pleasantly surprised and have something new to add to our repertoire. That seems fair. We were feeling fairly warm and fuzzy about those aspects of it, but there were a few cons. Can you spy any?

First of all, for anyone playing the Where's Westley game, can you spot him? (We'll chat about his name, and also how he's the perfect fuzzy bunny of a baby, soon). Second, though, what a mess! I mean, I've mentioned before that it's not just the cooking that lures me to the restaurants, it's the cleaning. Blue Apron and its ilk do not solve that problem. And there was a fair amount of work involved with this recipe, too, from creating the mise en place to pitting the olives.

That's Bret pitting the olives, and kvetching the whole time about how we'd have selected pitted olives if we were shopping for this dish. He's right. So, in considering whether this whole meal delivery system is something that would work for us, we have to consider that. It's true that it's probably cheaper than takeout, depending on what you takeout, but it's also true that you're paying for some of the work there as well, and here you're doing it yourself.

A few other concerns: The delivery "window" on Wednesday was "before 9 pm." I live in an apartment without a doorman on a very busy street; when I tracked my package while I was out in the afternoon, it said it had been left at the front door. I was pretty sure that meant that some nice family (hopefully someone who really needed it) was walking away with my dinner. When I got home it had been brought inside, perhaps by a caring neighbor, but still, a delivery window that's all day long is a little useless and a little stressful. (On the other hand, delivery is free, and I understand the logistics must be nightmarish. I'm just noting from my perspective that it's not ideal). The second big thing for us is that there is no option for a vegetarian "family plan." There is a vegetarian option for couples/pairs, so we signed up for that, meaning we can get three vegetarian meals of two portions each, each week. The portions are a decent size, but Bret and I are pretty big eaters and Lou can be, so it's not quiiiiite enough food. We can stretch it, for sure, by making a salad to go with the pasta for example, but we have to add that to the cost calculations.

Another thing: As delicious as the pasta we ate was, I'd never have made it, because it was white. We don't eat any white stuff anymore - it's all whole grain, so I can trick myself into thinking it's healthy to inhale three peanut butter-and-jelly sandwiches at a time. Samesies with the rice for the curry and the bread for the grilled cheese -- all white. You can't control the ingredients or even menu (which is how it's scale-able and fairly affordable, I know), but that means that if we went for it on a regular basis, three meals a week would likely be outside my normal comfort parameters, nutrition-wise.

All that said, by the time we'd finished hashing it over that night, we were pretty intrigued by the whole concept. If not all the time, then definitely some of the time. If you think of it as a cheaper alternative to taking a cooking class (which Bret and I love doing, and which is also a bit tougher as vegetarians), and when you factor in the definite stress reduction of having three meals present and accounted for, I think it's a great sometimes option. We started looking at other services and are going to try a few, especially while they're all running promotions and before they all go under. (Blue Apron and Hello Fresh, etc., seem long-term scalable and sustainable. Some of the other models seem not to be, to us, so we wanna try 'em now!). I've also signed up for my orientation at the Park Slope Food Co-op, because it's time for me to own up to my socialist roots. Orientation, guys, is two and a half hours. These guys don't play. So we'll be trying that as well, especially now that Amazon Fresh is dead to me (you're dead to me!) because they cancelled an order with no explanation and no apology two hours before it was supposed to arrive. I know, I sound like a princess, but I have options, AF. I don't have to put up with being treated that way, especially when it means I have to trek to Key Foods at 9:30 pm on Sunday night after getting of a five hour flight.

So. Have you tried the meal delivery services? Full service, DIY or somewhere in the middle? Do share! And if you've got coupon codes, share those too! Have a great weekend and we'll see you Monday.