Meal subscription - thinking about it

[Anonymous]

We were stuck in a rut of the same 12 meals every two weeks or so, so we invested in four of them. We did Blue Apron and never once really liked their meals.

We did EveryPlate and their minimum was 3 meals a week which was too much for us.

Home Chef was okay but they were bought by Kroger so now if we want to try a meal, we go to our local Kroger and check out the display.

We like Hello Fresh the best. Sometime the quality is not great but we always get a credit. We are close to a distribution center so it is always fresh and same day delivery. We have about 50 new meals to try with saving the recipe cards. So we paused delivery for several months. We can look every week and if two meals excite us, we will order. Otherwise we now add one or two of the previous meals to our menu for the week.

[Anonymous]

Make vegetable soup on weekends or buy soup from Costco or similar. Add precooked chicken to it, some bean pasta, some frozen peas. Healthy meal in 10 minutes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Given the specific issues you noted, I would never pick a meal subscription service as the appropriate answer.

I would tell your kids that they are now going to be involved in meal planning, including making a list, shopping, prep, and cleanup. For which nights do they want to be responsible?

Go from there.

Ordering a bunch of food from Blue Apron is not a whole lot different than getting takeout, it's just more work for you.

I disagree. Getting kids to do that is going to be a massive amount of work for OP. Getting them to make a meal from a subscription box would be much easier.

With a meal box, OP won’t have to think about what is for dinner on those nights. It completely takes care of decision fatigue. And if you have your kids and husband help choose the meals, they have only themselves to blame if they don’t like what they picked.

It’s actually quicker and not much more work to make a subscription meal, for me anyway. When you do takeout, you have to choose where you’re going to get it from, everyone has to choose their specific orders, and then you have to go pick it up. With a subscription box you just stand there and follow instructions and don’t have to use any brain cells. It’s actually faster and cheaper too, assuming your takeout isn’t fast food.

But tasking them with the whole process is also teaching them a life skill they need to know, so….

Baby steps. They will learn plenty by making a hello fresh recipe without compounding OP’s stress.