When You're Tired of Meal Planning, Let Blue Apron Do It For You (Review and Giveaway) -

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Disclaimer: This is not a sponsored post. I subscribed to the service on my own with my own money. Although, I would love to work with Blue Apron in the future.

I don’t know about you, but meal planning and grocery shopping are two of my least favorite things to do. Some months/weeks I’m really good about doing it, but most of the time we’re scrambling to plan meals. Last year, I started researching meal delivery services and came across several like Blue Apron, Hello Fresh, and Plated. One of my husband’s coworkers uses Blue Apron and offered to send him a link for a free week.

Our first delivery

Blue Apron offers two different plans: one for two and one for families. The two person plan includes a weekly delivery of three meals. The family meal plan allows you to choose between two or four meals that will feed a family of four. Since Sesame still doesn’t eat very much at dinner time, we choose the two person plan. You can also choose between carnivore, omnivore, or vegetarian plans. We chose omnivore and tend to receive one vegetarian meal week. You can also cancel your delivery for the following week if the meals don’t appeal to you, but you have to do it by 12 noon the week before your scheduled delivery.

Beef & Pinto Bean Chili with Crispy Tortilla Strips, Avocado & Cotija Cheese

We started our free week and loved the meals. I’m sure some of yall saw me post on Instagram about them. The meals were all very healthy and each box comes with detailed recipe cards that take you step by step through the process. Most of the meals made enough to feed two adults and a toddler, but most days Sesame eats leftovers from the other two meals I’ve made during the week. Mr. S raved about almost every meal and we both agreed that it helped us with portion control, since we are both working on losing a few pounds. Despite the smaller portions, everything was very filling and the flavors were incredible. Although, there was a one mishap with chicken thighs that led to us having frozen pizza for dinner, but we’ve enjoyed 95% of the meals.

Pan-Roasted Chicken with Mashed Potatoes & Maple-Glazed Carrots

I was happy and feeling significantly less stressed about handling meals, plus we were eating out less, which saved money as well. Of course when things are going, something has to ruin the moment and this brings me to why it took me so long to write this review.

Bouillabaisse-Style Fish Stew with Fennel, Potatoes & Castelvetrano Olives

Things went great for a few weeks and then one Friday our delivery didn’t show up. There was no warning and by the time I noticed all Blue Apron could do was refund our money. Of course, I was annoyed because this meant a week of m having to plan meals, plus it was too late to opt out of the second week. This was the first disaster and then the following week my delivery didn’t look like it was showing up, but I decided to be a bit more proactive. This time I contacted both Blue Apron and the shipping company and apparently the new driver was having issues finding my address. I received my order that week, but it came super late in the day and threw us off our staycation schedule. You would think this would be it, but then two weeks later the same delivery issue with a driver finding the house happened AGAIN!!! At this point, I prepared myself to cancel the subscription and try something new. I reached out to both Blue Apron and their shipping partner on social media, as well as sent them scathing emails because hello I don’t even work for you and I’m sending all this business your way, but I can’t even get my deliveries in a timely fashion. I was ready to cancel and then a Blue Apron representative called me on the phone outside of business hours. She apologized profusely for the continued mishaps and switched me to a more reliable shipping company and then comped two weeks of our meals. It’s been about three weeks since that last mishap and everything has been smooth sailing.

Since I’ve been using Blue Apron for about three months now, I’ve accumulated quite a few meals to give out. I’ll be giving three Mamademics readers a week of free meals. Make sure you live in the Blue Apron delivery area before entering.

This giveaway is in no way sponsored by Blue Apron. You must be a subscriber to Mamademics in order to enter.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Update 4/27/2015: All winners have been contacted via email and yes I ended up choosing an extra one. Thanks to everyone who entered and I hope you keep reading.