Home Cooking with a Little Less Thinking

I live in a part of the country where we don't have specialized grocery stores and eating out is super expensive. And while I am fortunate to be married to someone who loves to cook, there are a lot of times when I am the one food shopping, meal planning, and cooking. Too often a long day for both of us means making something fast and therefore usually not as healthy for our family dinner. So when I heard all the hype about the different meal delivery services I was intrigued. Being the person that I am (loving a deal and loving the research) I decided to try the ones that were available in my area. Most of them offer an initial discount and in case you want to do what I did, I've tried to include these in the links below.

In general, my favorite is Green Chef (see review below) and would probably order every week, but to compromise with my husband, we have settled on 3 meals once a month. His main issue is the amount of packaging and that you still have to cook and prep the meals. So if you are looking for a super fast and easy dinner, meal prep companies are probably not for you. Most dinners take 30-40 minutes.

The bottomline is that all three companies we tried were similar. Most are committed to healthy options, reducing packaging, and having prep time around 30-40 minutes. The 2-person meals are generally enough for two adults and two young kids. With that being said, you can't go wrong with any of them, but here's my quick summary of the ones we tried:

Green Chef
This service became my favorite. I think the meals are slightly better than the others and produce comes very fresh. I didn't have any issues with anything arriving rotten or missing.

Pros
Everything is organic
Offers different meal plans - i.e. paleo, keto, vegetarian
Eco-friendly packaging

Cons
Slightly more expensive than the others (Plans vary from $11-15/meal)

Sun Basket:
The meals were not as popular with the family but were still delicious. Mainly chose Green Chef for the keto option and slightly lower cost.

Pros
Everything is organic
Offers different meal plans - i.e. paleo, keto, vegetarian
Eco-friendly packaging

Cons

Most expensive - but not by much (Classic plans vary from $12-15/meal)

Blue Apron:
Most of the meals were great but they don't have the same options for specialized meal plans and not everything was organic, so while slightly cheaper, it wasn't cheap enough to not get all organic produce.

Pros
Cheapest option (Plans start around $9.99/meal)

Cons
Not all organic (they do try to do mostly organic and non GMO)
Not as many meal plan options

Keep in mind that with all of them you need to remember to cancel the weeks you don't want deliveries or you can end up with a lot more food than you anticipated. You can learn from my mistake(s)!