What advantages do meal-kit services have, that proliferated during the pandemic?

They tend to have high-quality ingredients, that you don’t have to shop for or think about before you can make them, so they sort of give you time that you’d otherwise possibly be using to do those things yourself.

What I found is, that it enables you to sample a large variety of different cuisines, that you normally would not. It also may improve your cooking skills and confidence overall.
It definitely is more expensive than buying the ingredients yourself, but I am a lazy bum, and I would normally never bother to endlessly comb supermarket isles for ingredients for a dish I might fancy having, so week after week, I end up buying the standard assortment of frozen and canned junk.
It also removes the risk of not finding necessary ingredients at all.

The biggest selling point IMO is the creativity and variety of the meals. Also you can cook those meals with your own modifications. For example, I nearly always substitute avocado oil for other cooking oils.

A friend of mine has been posting a photo on Facebook of her dinners from that type of service. My take is all the ingredients in one package, a variety of cuisines, and I think for her it’s also portion control.

I assumed it’s more expensive than buying from the grocery store, but when cooking for just one or two maybe the risk of ingredients going bad is eliminated?

I subscribed to Blue Apron in 2018 and 2019, while my kids were gone. I liked the variety and trying new dishes. And I liked that the spices were included and measured. There was no waste after the meal.

I stopped afetr my son moved home after graduating college, because the meals didn’t provide enough for two full grown men to eat. For a long time I would make the “meal for two” and take leftovers to work for lunch the next day. But with my son home that ended.

My friend is using Green Chef kits to help teach her 13 year old to cook. They are really liking it, and he’s getting the hang of a lot of techniques. I wish they had been around when my daughter was that age. She likes to cook now, but what a great way to start!

If there is one that offers meals that are €4 ($5) per day I will definitely consider it.
As it stands, the prices right now are just too steep for me.
But I very much like the concepts (as long as I’m convinced they’re environment friendly).

Minimizing the time for shopping and meal preparing would be the only advantage I see.
For me there are more cons than pros in this type of service. I personally like to cook from scratch. I like to shop for my ingredients as well. I like the process of putting the meal plan for each meal and the whole week. I can do this and be under the price for these services and have better quality control on the ingredients. But that is just me as for some it might be the best thing since going through the drive-through.

An advantage is that you know what’s exactly in the food you’re cooking – no hidden salt or sugars. Another advantage is that when you buy ingredients for a recipe, after you’ve bought a head of this and a bunch of that and a jar of this spice and a bottle of that sauce, it can end up being very costly, whereas with the meal kits, youi’re not shelling out all that money.

I get deals offered to me for meal kits and the prices are pretty good. I got an email today about an offer thru my Hulu account.

@Forever_Free Do you have a spare room?

@chyna Yes I do. Which house location are you interested in. Ocean or Mountain or both?

Ocean!!