Hellobee Boards

Oh interesting! I thought it was going to be quick and easy!

I use to do dream dinners before we had kids because we worked so much... Basically once a month we had to go to store and assemble our meals for freezing. Which was great because if you don't like something you don't have to add it during the meal prep or if you like something a lot you can put extra (within reason) and so on.

Then the morning we want to eat it move it from freezer to fridge and come home and just cook or warm it up. Fast and yummy! I don't even have time to do this! Haha.

I haven't tried it but dream dinners use to have a pick up service ... aka they made the meals for you but it wouldn't be made the way you like it.

I've tried Blue Apron, Plated and Hello Fresh.

All require you the prep then cook.

Let me look for my review of them all.

ETA:
http://boards.hellobee.com/topic/has-anyone-used-blue-apron#post-2441662

I did a trial and liked it okay, but I thought it was too expensive and I hate how wasteful the packaging is.

I really like Hello Fresh. It's easy to choose certain weeks. But I like to cook and cook pretty elaborate weeknight meals regardless of if its a delivery service- elaborate meaning multiple dishes and over 30 minutes prep/cook.

@Foodnerd81: Oh, yeah, we tried it before the babies came. It was good for me because I work long days. I used to go to the grocery store and plan meals but due to my long hours some of the food would go bad. I wanted to stop wasting that food. So that's when Blue Apron came in. Plus, DH was trying to take on more responsibilities and he wasn't really that comfortable in the kitchen. With everything (directions, ingredient, spices), all he had to do was follow the directions and he definitely got more comfortable in the kitchen. Thumbs up for me.

Now that the babies are here, I actually use a meal delivery service, where I just have to reheat. It's local to Seattle called Fresh and Ready. I did try Freshly a few weeks but I like Fresh and Ready better. Meals are tastier and I'm in the monthly program so it's cheaper. Freshly was just refrigerator microwave meals. A bit better than frozen meals. With the twins, I'm not sure when I'll go back to using Hello Fresh.

I agree, I turned down our Blue Apron invitation because if I'm going to spend that much money on dinner I expect someone else to cook it. I really enjoy meal planning since it means I get to pick out stuff that I know I like to eat, so why would I pay extra to give that power to someone else?

We get it every few weeks. Besides all the packaging we love it. Although there's a lot of prep, the steps are simple. So DH, who NEVER cooked before usually cooks while I do LO's bedtime. So for us it's not so much about convenience but effectively allows us to shift responsibilities around. Sure DH could meal plan, go to the store, and cook something much cheaper, but that's never going to happen.

Definitely liked blue apron more than hello fresh because of the cost. One hello fresh meal was ground turkey, steamed veggies and pasta. Yeah, I can do that for 10 bucks. Both hellofresh and blue apron seemed really carb heavy,like lots of pizza. I love pizza but not every week. We ended going to cook smarts and love it

@MrsKerch: @simplyfelicity: what is cooks smart?

@Raindrop: I do dream dinners. So easy and I can usually have dinner done in 20 minutes.

I've done Hello Fresh a few times and I agree - way too much work for a weeknight. All it's really saving me is going to the store and if I went to the store, I can buy a lot of the ingredients already prepped like chopped onions and chopped cilantro.

@Mrs D: Cooksmarts.com is a web based meal planning service. They set you up with 4 meals a week. you can make what is in the meal plan (customizable for size 2-8 portions and dietary needs, Vegetarian, Paleo, GF or Original). The website will put all of the ingredients on a shopping list for you and also provides prep instructions with the number of days ahead of time something can be done without going bad. Obviously they also then provide the recipes.

For my family it works out really well. I shop and prep on Sunday, and then assemble & cook on the week nights.

@PurplePeony: yes, this! I use it for recipe inspiration all of the time.

@Foodnerd81: Ha. The AKs love is real... and the use of foodler... We do a lot of Cafe Mamtaz too. I think the delivery guy is so confused since he has delivered to us at 3 different addresses in the last 9 months!

@Foodnerd81: yup! We get it all the time! They are over on L Street!

We use Blue Apron! Dh is a big cook, so he can make the meals pretty quickly and easily, so the perk for us is that it takes out the work of menu planning. We used it for awhile and then stopped, but then got in a rut of shopping/menu planning where we never seemed to have the right ingredients to make anything interesting, so now we're back to using it again.