Dr.SunShine.504: Meal Subscriptions

Friday, July 14, 2017

Meal Subscriptions

I always say, if I were to hit the lottery, there are 2 things I'd want in my home that would be the only luxurious things I think that I need. First is a soft serve ice cream machine. Laugh if you may, but who doesn't like unlimited soft serve ice cream? Matter of fact, I dare you to go on a cruise and attempt to avoid the soft serve ice cream machine that's available 24/7. It's impossible. I dare you to go into New Orleans Hamburger and Seafood and not at least glance at the soft serve ice cream machine. The second thing that I desire is a chef. It's not that I hate cooking... I like it when I have the free time. I despise the whole process of grocery shopping and lugging it all up to the 3rd floor where I live. So in the past 2 years of living where I live, mentally, cooking has become overrated. But somebody's got to do it... I'm over fast food, and I'd like to dine out socially, not out of necessity.

In an attempt to ease my whoas in this area, I decided to try meal subscriptions. I started out with Hello Fresh last year. After almost making it to a year, I decided to let it go. I'm sure that the makers of Hello Fresh mean well and all, but the food was mostly mediocre for me. I recommended friends, and some hated it. It was a bit too eclectic for them. As for me, I'm willing to try just about any food at least once, yet there is literally only so much couscous a woman wants to eat. It seemed every week it was included in a meal. The best meals this subscription seemed to offer came in the form of stir fry. Though I felt empowered that my trips to the grocery store now only include runs for fruits, seasonings and snacks, I was ready for some change.

A few weeks ago I decided to sign up for Blue Apron. But let's keep it 100. My attention span at times is that of a child. Knowing this I've decided to also subscribe to Home Chef so that I can alternate my ordering from the two.

What's the difference? Both provide much better meals than Hello Fresh. Home Chef offers more variety and options with less calories. It seems that Blue Apron's chef must be a fat kid at heart because the amount of calories in most of those meals range from 600-800. Home Chef offers the options of bonus meals, meals specific to the season or holiday, and add-ons such as a fruit basket and smoothies. I haven't seen any others that offer this. The pricing is about the same as Hello Fresh which was about $65 for 3 meals (to feed 2 people) in a case per week. Both Home Chef and Blue Apron offer the option of only ordering 1-2 meals per week. All plans allow you to skip a week whenever ready. All meals take anywhere from 20-40 min to prep. All meals have been relatively easy to cook. All ingredients come in the box except olive oil and the need for salt and pepper or Season All.

So far the best meals I've had thus far are some steak lettuce wraps from Blue Apron and Bacon, Goat cheese and mozzarella Flatbread pizza from Home Chef.

I love the variety with ordering meals via a subscription. I think anyone can get burned out on trying to figure out what to cook for the week especially when you may have a heavy schedule with work, school, kids, care giving, etc. My suggestion is that you try a subscription for yourself. Not sure of which one to use? This article helped me out with deciding. CLICK HERE!!