Blue Apron

90% sure it was a Blue Apron box or something with instructions so I shoulda been fine. After prepping ingredients I started up a pan of oil to pan fry whatever it was (fish maybe??). But the instructions said to make sure the oil was hot. Well I have made the mistake before of adding food to cold oil and it didn’t crisp up and I’m a smart person and won’t do that again.

I got paid $13 for buying 8 Blue Apron meals this past week. I had an american express offer on my card account ($25 off $50+ purchase), along with the $20 off your first box ($80 off 4 total boxes but I'll cancel it after my first gets delivered), and a surprising $50 rebate in my Ibotta app (this rebate was only available for 24 hours so I was happy to get that notification for it, it's still pending but I will receive it at the end of this week). I never buy meal delivery kits normally, but that type of deal was too hard to pass up!.

The problem I had with Blue Apron style meal services is, while they didn't require planning and ingredient shopping, preparation could sometimes take as long as 30 minutes for one meal. Many of them were multi step affairs.

At the beginning of the pandemic I cut out everything. Amazon Prime, Netflix, Hulu, my gym membership, massage membership, weekly manicures/pedicures, Spotify, Blue Apron, Instacart, home phone, you name it. I let my Costco membership expire (used it mostly for getting cheaper gas for my car but am hardly driving), and everything else that was pre-paid I didn’t renew, except my alarm monitoring and Ring camera.

Happy with both services. Blue Apron even has a wine pairing option now and they offer a “premium” meal once a week if you want something with more fancy ingredients that feels more special than your run of the mill weeknight meal.

I've bought a few things some were good some were a waste. Hellofresh/Blue Apron - solid choices honestly, eating as an adult is hard this makes it easy. For the most part everything was fine except for a few deliveries but hard times hit and this was one of the first things to go.