Daily Deal: Blue Apron 3 Delivered Meals for 2 People
from the good-deals-on-cool-stuff dept
Whether you’re new to the kitchen or you’re looking to spice things up with exciting, seasonal recipes, Blue Apron will deliver just what you need. It’s simple – you’ll get fresh, gourmet recipes and the highest quality, sustainably-sourced ingredients to bring them to life. The Blue Apron 3 Meals for 2 People delivers pre-portioned ingredients for 3 recipes to be cooked & enjoyed by 2 people delivered to your door, and it’s on sale now for $27 (54% off) in the Techdirt Deals store. You can also select a family plan where you get enough for 2 recipes for four people for $35 (49% off).
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Comments on “Daily Deal: Blue Apron 3 Delivered Meals for 2 People”
>highest quality, sustainably-sourced ingredients
I hope what they actually box is better than what they used in their promo pictures, because that onion and garlic are obviously foreign imports, which makes me question the sustainably-sourced claim.
Re: Re:
What’s wrong with the onion and garlic, or I suppose I should ask what makes you think they’re ‘obviously foreign imports’?
Re: "sustainably-sourced"
The “sustainably-sourced” label normally refers to wild game of some kind, indicating that it’s not being harvested from a rapidly declining wild population or endangered species.
It’s a silly term for any kind of farm produce, which by definition is always going to be “sustainable” as long as there’s a market for it.
It's hard to quit
I have read that it becomes difficult to drop a continuing paid subscription from these guys using their web page or even on the phone.
Re: It's hard to quit
I admit, I was considering testing this out – just to see what the fuss was about (I’ve seen mention of Blue Apron several times)…
But then reading the terms, I realized I would have to expend effort to cancel after the promotional was done. That’s where I drew the line – I absolutely hate services like that.
So what exactly are they selling and in what amounts? Other than the picture, which may or may not be representative of an actual delivery, there is no shipping list of any kind.
Unless they are marketing their delivery service to home-bound people who can’t get out and shop for themselves, what is the point of having perishable food shipped to people’s houses?
Re: Re:
Think of it like ordering a pizza, except you have to make it yourself because the delivery is composed of the raw ingredients.
Yeah, I don’t really get it either, suppose it saves some time shopping and looking for a recipe, but the trade-off seems a bit expensive in time and money.
Re: Re:
I suppose the point is that they provide just enough ingredients to make the meal, no more, no less.
This prevents purchasing more than necessary, and as such, wasting food/money in the process.
Whether that’s a reality or not, I don’t know.
They also do all the work of choosing what you’ll be making, and finding the recipe. I’m not sure if that’s a bonus or not, but people have become immensely lazy.
Furthermore, it seems we’ve reached an era where people would rather order their product than go get it themselves – chalk that up to the “Amazon effect”.
No mention of organic ingredients...
As such, these meals are inferior to the home cooked meals we already prepare as a family daily.
Home cooked meals are definitely a good thing, and this is still a step in the right direction.
We need to escape the processed food industry.
Been there, done that
My wife signed up for Blue Apron about a year ago. We never made it through the trial period. The recipes were horrible. We ate a lot of PB&J for those two weeks.
Re: Been there, done that
Here’s a question I would like to ask the people who have tried Blue Apron: are the vegetables good enough that you can eat them as a salad? Do they sell them as salads?
Cooking spinach, for example, is something I do to salvage spinach which has gone bad. Four bucks worth of supposedly fresh spinach turns out to be going soggy, well before the sell-by date, so I chop it up and cook it down into a spicy goulash dish which could equally well hve been made with sixty-nine cents worth of canned spinach. Ditto for cauliflower and broccoli au grautin. My rule of thumb is that if something needs to be cooked anyway, then frozen or canned is just as good, and can be gotten in quantity and stored in the freezer or on the shelf until needed.
Similarly, I prefer to eat cheese on good bread, or on a neutral cracker. I accompany it with pateurized fruit juice, instead of wine, but the principle is much the same. It is when cheese is “off” that one uses it for cooking.
I was discussing food with my mother recently, and she pointed out that, at nearly sixty, I am the last generation to have been routinely fed at home. After that, the women all had jobs, and their cooking became full of compromises.
Here are some suggestions for young people wanting to learn to cook.
Cook a simple vegetarian dish, based on canned or frozen vegetables, with no meat, butter, or oils, and no cheese except for a topping of Parmesan cheese. Use lots of herbs and spices, and try out different flavors. On a vegan or near-vegan basis, it is much harder to go wrong. Your first excursion into meat-cooking should be a can of tuna (chunk light), which you can make into chili, curry, etc., or into Ceviche with lime juice, tarragon, etc. Add a cheese tray, with the best bread you can find, and assorted fruit juice; and the best salad you can manage, to make a complete meal.
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If you wnat to get dried herbs and spices by mail, that is a sensible proposition.
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Pendery’s World of Chiles & Spices
http://www.penderys.com/
This is an old established company (1870), in its fifth generation of family management, which has made a successful transition to the internet.
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You don’t want to be getting your recipes prescribed to you with your groceries. Get a set of cookbooks
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Adele Davis, Let’s Cook It Right (there are editions up to 1972, I have the 1962 edition)
https://www.amazon.com/Lets-Cook-Right-Adele-Davis/dp/B00AMXSEFS/ref=sr_1_1/161-7199760-8072528?ie=UTF8&qid=1470848104&sr=8-1&keywords=lets+cook+it+right
https://www.amazon.com/Lets-Cook-Right-Adelle-Davis/dp/0151501661/ref=sr_1_2/161-7199760-8072528?ie=UTF8&qid=1470848104&sr=8-2&keywords=lets+cook+it+right
This is one of the standard good cookbooks., a book which has stood the test of time.
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A couple of vegetarian cookbooks:
Frances Moore Lappe, Diet for a Small Planet, 1971 et, seq.
https://www.amazon.com/Diet-Small-Planet-20th-Anniversary/dp/0345321200/ref=sr_1_1/154-1573456-3862909?ie=UTF8&qid=1470848724&sr=8-1&keywords=diet+for+a+small+planet
and the companion volume:
Ellen Buchman Ewald, Recipes for a Small Planet, 1973 et. seq.
https://www.amazon.com/Recipes-Small-Planet-Ellen-Buchman/dp/0345324927/ref=sr_1_1/154-1573456-3862909?ie=UTF8&qid=1470849056&sr=8-1&keywords=recipes+for+a+small+planet
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Karen Brooks, The Complete Vegetarian Cookbook, 1976
https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Vegetarian-Cookbook-Karen-Brooks/dp/0671805525/ref=sr_1_sc_1/154-1573456-3862909?ie=UTF8&qid=1470849774&sr=8-1-spell&keywords=keren+brooks+the+complete+vegetarian+cookbook
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Frederick Rosengarten, The Book Of Spices, 1969, 1973
https://www.amazon.com/Book-Spices-Frederick-Rosengarten/dp/0515032204/ref=sr_1_1/154-1573456-3862909?ie=UTF8&qid=1470850040&sr=8-1&keywords=frederick+rosengarten+the+book+of+spices
An encyclopedia of spices, with recipes.
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