General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsBlue Apron, Hello Fresh, Freshly....does anyone have experience with these?
Hubby is allergic to Wheat so we follow the Gluten Free diet.
We choose Freshly because they guarantee that every dish is GF.
Our first meals came tonight. Shipped fresh, blocks of icepac type gell pacs between each layer.
We will try our first meal tomorrow but are kind of excited about the options.
Just wondering if anyone else has had experiences with it?
MaryMagdaline
(6,859 posts)Quality of food is very good. I live alone and found its way too much meat for me. Otherwise no complaints.
I dont like the amount of waste ... ice packs, boxes etc.
I will be cancelling, though, simply because its too much food for one person.
sakabatou
(42,204 posts)But we found some stuff was easier to get at the store that would take less prep and money.
Neema
(1,151 posts)ingredients for a weeks worth of cooking without so much going into landfills.
GulfCoast66
(11,949 posts)Some of the people who work for her, in their 20s and young 30s started getting them. I guess they require some amount of real cooking which these kids had never really done. Now these kids are buying ingredients on their own and actually cooking. They realize that its not that hard. And can be enjoyable.
So I dont criticize them anymore. Better than fast food.
From what I can tell they are generally high quality ingredients.
blogslut
(38,023 posts)but the cost always held me back.
Then, the local market started selling Plated meal kits in-store. I got one because I was sick and tired of my own recipes and thought what the heck. The kit was cool and the meal was okay but it inspired me to add another recipe to my rotation, with my personal tweaks.
I may get one again but probably not. I scratched my itch.
trackfan
(3,650 posts)Enjoyed meals from both, but, overall, prefer Plated.
MissB
(15,813 posts)So if youre cheap like me, you can use your own ingredients and not pay for the delivery.
912gdm
(959 posts)For people who don't think they can cook anything more complicated then a grilled cheese it is an awesome service.
They put nice ingredients together and include directions that are pretty fool proof. I think it's a great intro to cooking.
madaboutharry
(40,247 posts)You learn some great cooking techniques. And there is a lot of gratification because the food does come out tasting delicious and looking exactly like the food in photographs that come with the instructions.
I eventually got kind of bored with it and felt I learned enough to cook interesting food on my own.
The packaging waste is ridiculous.
snpsmom
(692 posts)The recipes (even those they call low calorie) are not healthy. I recently researched these services because I teach 1 1/2 hours drive from my home and my husband needs a heart healthy diet. Nearly all of the options have 700 calories per dinner or more and close to an entire day's recommended intake of sodium in them.
Maybe they are teaching people to cook, but they aren't teaching them to cook well. They are definitely not for us.
Hotler
(11,484 posts)to plan, shop and prep a meal yourself.
Blue_true
(31,261 posts)I cook most of my meals, even if I have little time. For some people, cooking takes time away from things that they need to do it like doing more. I happen to be a crazy multitasker, so maybe I can get away with cooking my own meals, whereas another person in my shoes would not. The biggest problem that I find with cooking is being single, most items I buy serve four people minimum. So I have to freeze somethings, which isn't optimal for fresh meat. What I learned over time is that somethings are actually better with freezing, homemade cookie and breakfast pastry dough gets better with freezing, I make a big batch dough, shape pieces of it into the shape that I want, then freeze the pieces and take out only what I want until all is gone. It takes time to develop those skills, most young people don't know how to cook or even what to buy in grocery stores, so meal services work well for them.
Tracer
(2,769 posts)Don't exactly know how it happened.
The food was good, the packaging was excessive.
Actually, one of the meals has made it into my rotation: A sausage and pasta dish with pesto. Easy to make on my own without Hello Fresh.
jayfish
(10,040 posts)Got a box the other day where one of the meals included 8 carrots that needed to be processed. I kid you not; each carrot came in its own, sealed, plastic bag. I really couldn't believe it.
The food itself is fine but after making a few meals you see that your not getting much for your money. If I wasn't so lazy I could re-create the dishes for about 25% of the cost from HF.
MineralMan
(146,351 posts)but the cost is way too high, and the amount of packaging used is also too high a cost. However, so many people have never learned to plan and cook their own meals, so if it teaches those skills, then I'm all for it.
I'm the cook in my household. I learned those skills while doing homework at the kitchen table and watching my mother prepare meals. Little by little, I learned to do it myself, and those skills have benefited me for the rest of my life. But, not everyone gets that kind of teaching, and cooking is, as my wife says, "Sorta magic." She does't cook much and really doesn't know where to start. That's OK, because I like doing it.
Since those meal kits require the customers to do the final preparation, they'll teach people some skills, so that's a good thing.
el_bryanto
(11,804 posts)As a single person i am not super interested in getting packets sent to me automatically - but they are a bit pricier (not a lot) and they let me order stuff and then they send it out on Monday I guess.
Bryant
Codeine
(25,586 posts)to avoid chopping an onion or portioning out whatever flesh you eat. Is it really that difficult to buy component parts at a fraction of the price and cut them yourself? If you already have the time to cook a meal you probably have the additional ten minutes to prep the ingredients.
People will complain about poverty and the costs of living, cost of prescriptions, or real estate prices on this board all day but then enthusiastically waste significant amounts of money on absolute balderdash like uncooked delivered meals. Blows my mind.
Blue_true
(31,261 posts)Over the years I have learned that the toughest thing about cooking is getting quality utensils and cookware, especially cookware (although the newer stuff is pretty impressive).
The minimum people should start with is a good knife set that includes a chef knife and maybe a cleaver. If a person can't afford to buy outright, save up and buy a good knife set. Then buy a good quality colander, it comes in handy for lots of things. Next a good set of sauce pots with lids and then a couple of pans with lids. Then get some good quality plastic storage containers of various sizes with lids.
I can prepare a large onion from scratch in less that 10 minutes, doing anything with it from thin slicing to put on poultry burgers to mincing to put in sauces. The onion cost maybe $0.50, a bag of six lasts me a month or more. A four pack of boneless chicken breasts make 6-10 meals for me, a pack cost $7-$10 depending on sales. As a single person, I can home eat for a month on $45 or less. I spend more money a lot more money on lunch during the day, since I have never did home packed lunches. I believe a family of four, with an efficient kitchen, can eat on less than $200 pretty easily, in fact that could be easier because grocery packaging is built for families and coupons that greatly discount stuff are targeted at larger buys. I have seen people reduce a big grocery bill by half. One time I saw a lady take a $350 grocery bill down to something like $40. I had to wait while the coupons were rung up, but as I watched I was more and more impressed with how well she had planned her shopping trip.
displacedtexan
(15,696 posts)We got a sample Blue Apron box and didn't like the particular vegetables included in the meal ingredients. My husband is the meat cook, & I'm the baker so we were mainly interested in new recipes and techniques.
I stumbled onto the Tasty video recipes on Buzzfeed and we've made lots of their meals. I believe their short video recipe lessons are the future of cookbooks. We just decide on the proteins we want during the week and shop according to the Tasty recipe. Meal components are infinitely mix & match, and the written recipes are there, along with the videos.
I've actually stated cooking some of the meat dishes because the instructions are so good, and my husband has become a pretty good dessert maker. The Blue Apron box is a good idea, but it's just not for us.
davsand
(13,421 posts)Mostly, they are easy enough to be successful and everything you need is right there. Ingredients are measured and prepackaged, and most of the time the cutting and chopping is done for you so you have uniformity in the cook time. All those things can trip up a novice cook, and they are avoided with those meal kits.
A lot of times somebody might want to experiment with a new cuisine, a flavor, or a spice but they don't know if they will like--and maybe they don't especially want to have to buy an entire bottle or jar of something just to try it out. A meal kit takes care of that.
I have zero problem with the concept, but I agree with everyone here that talks about the expense. I wouldn't want to pay those prices long term. It is worth it, however, to have somebody else set you up to succeed if you are trying to learn.
Laura
demtenjeep
(31,997 posts)I don't need to be at work from 6:45 to 3:45 with 200 smelly, hormonal challenged 13-14 year old students who one day think they are mature and others think and act like toddlers and its always a mix bag...
I don't feel like coming home and cooking a fabulous meal. There are only two of us now that we are in the empty nest phase. A food service eliminates hours in the grocery store, hours cooking, all of that.
Our thought is to eat those meals 4 days a week and go out 3 days a week..
Also, hubby is on a diet so he can eat a meal and know it is 450 calories it helps him plan his food day.
I really like it. Just wondered if there were some favorite dishes from Freshly