Blue Apron Review + Giveaway!

The short story: Blue Apron is easy, fun, and the meals are so darn yummy!  And the great news is I have FIVE free meals to give away from Blue Apron 🙂

The long story: I can’t even remember how I found out about Blue Apron.  Oh yes! My friend KS started doing it.  I almost signed up earlier this year, then I thought, nah, $60 per week is too much!   Then I realized just how much we eat out… I mean multiple times a week, at a minimum of $30/meal when we’re out with the kids.  Sometimes we splurge, because we do love our food, and those meals are even more ($50-60 a meal, ugh)!  So I talked to K about it (and she loves it!) and finally thought, maybe the $60 is worth it, and it’ll save me money in the long run!  I think I was right… we’ve received two weeks’ worth of Blue Apron meals, and they have been AMAZING!  And BTW, I am writing this purely on my own… no payment or anything from Blue Apron.  It’s just because I love food, and I REALLY love when food is simple, healthy, and affordable!

The premise: You log into www.blueapron.com and tell them your preferences (if you don’t want red meat, any meat at all, no pork, no shellfish, etc).  You receive 3 meals a week, on Fridays, in a refrigerated box.  We like to make the meals over the weekend, so we can spend more time at home, and not have to plan out “what’s for dinner?” each night.  My profile is set for “Omnivore” and I get the 2 servings/meal size (vs. 4 servings/meal for a larger family–granted we do have 4 people, but these meals are the kind that the boys won’t touch!)  It looks like this:

Super easy to use.  And I can’t stand when you get auto-shipments and automatically billed (ahem, Beachbody)–that’s the worst!  Blue Apron doesn’t do that.  It’s easy to skip a week, and if you want to cancel, you just cancel.  Nothing complicated about it.  You can see below that I skipped Oct. 7 delivery (we will be at the Army Ten Miler in DC!)

And here’s the ratings and comments I gave the 3 meals from this weekend (some of my comments are brief–“Yum!”–but the meals really are worth 5 stars):

So here’s what I made for dinner tonight: Shrimp and Grits.  Oooh yummy!  Never made it before, but since we live in NC, I figured I’d embrace my “southern-ness” 🙂

All the food has been in the fridge since Friday, so it stayed fresh.  I like how they put the smaller stuff like spices or small servings of butter or cheese in a little bag and call it “Knick Knacks.”  Everything is really high quality, and labeled so it’s easy to see what’s what.  I lay out all the ingredients, with the recipe card:

And then unwrap from the packaging:

The first step (of 6 total, but each step has many sub-steps) is to wash and slice the veggies, shred the cheese, and wash the shrimp and add salt, pepper, and paprika:

The first step usually takes the most time, but I enjoy slicing and prepping everything.  The steps are really simple and easy to understand too.  I got the grits + corn cooking, and then the shrimp:

Then got the sauce cooking, while I added butter, cheese, and the lemon zest to the grits:

This is the only point where I was juggling the two dishes, plus dealing with the kids and the dog, i.e. struggling.  But it turned out perfectly!  Mine doesn’t look quite as pretty as their picture, but the kids were rushing me so I just kinda dumped it all on there!

Hubby and I chowed down–meanwhile the kids wouldn’t even try a bite!  Their loss 😛

Bottom line: I’m continuing Blue Apron right now.  New recipes and flavors every week, portions & foods already picked out for me, and $10/person/meal.  Think of it as restaurant quality, but you make it yourself (and don’t have to worry about getting out of the house, or tipping, or bringing your loud, obnoxious kids to a restaurant! lol)

First five to comment below, and on my Facebook page, get a free delivery of Blue Apron!