EveryPlate for Everyone!
We are a busy household and like many households, dinner usually arrives in the form of a question rather than an answer. As with many people, it also ends up being a 50/50 mix of "well, I guess we're getting fast food/take out" rather than cooking.
Enter Meal Prepping Services
HelloFresh, Blue Apron, Hungryroot, Freshly are a few examples are meal services and HelloFrsh and Freshly are great, but can be expensive too. These services are great as they contain the recipie as well as all the necessary ingredients. Fantastic! Home cooked meals in less than 1 hour to 45 minutes. However, enters the biggest part of the equation... Price
Price per serving
Blue Apron is one of the more premium, pricey services but has better meals as a whole, including ingredients. Blue Apron per servings can run in the middle of $9.99 for an average serving (along with shipping at $7.99). This is great but for two people that can run as high as $20/meal plus shipping for the meal. That is a considerable cost consisting my main purpose was to cut costs of dining out as well as not pay and arm and a leg in the process.
EasyPlate comes in at around 2.99 to 3.99 (for more premium) meals, which is fantastic for two people. For one weeks box of 4 meals, we are paying $50 with shipping. This works out to about $200/month for 4 meals a week, with 3 meals on our own (or if we're feeling especially lazy that day, we all have 'em). This is much better than anywhere between $15-$30/2 people eating out.
But how does it taste??
Given that EveryPlate is on the lower ring of the meal deliveries, there comes a reduction in ingredients to an extent. Most recipes include both garlic and onions pretty heavily. This isn't necessarily bad but is a large staple in order to make the food taste well (who doesn't like those two?!?). As with that, every meal I've made so far has come out very well, even if I didn't follow the instructions to a T (read: I mixed something too early or otherwise messed preparation up).
Variety
Each week, about 5 full days before your scheduled delivery date, you have the option to select your meals (or add additional meals on) to your order for that following weel. Should you elect (or not choose) a meal, a default menu will be sent out. Heavy emphasis, if you do not choose your meats each week, pork will be your default. That is an important note since my wife does not care for prok, so if I miss selecting meals for the week, it is on me to make those recipes for my lunch instead. Each week you will find around 8-10 meals to choose from with at least 1-3 of them being vegetarian. Additionally, you have the option to swap ingredients out (pork for chicken) or swapping out zucchini for green beans.
Cooking Process
Cooking with Easy Plate is, well, easy! Each recipe comes with a convenient recipe card that has the dish on the front (I'm a window shopper) as well as the prep and cook time along with the ingredients. The ingredients also indicate if they're refrigerated or not, so you know where to look easily. Once there, usually each recipe is 8 easy steps, with prep in the first 3 or so and cooking in the last 5. I find prep is the longest and my recipes usually exceed the estimates by about 20%. This is mostly due to me being very, very slow in cutting and methodical in the prep process. If you are quick to chop and have lots of room to use a large cutting board, it shouldn't take long (or even grab a helping hand).
Wrapping Up
EveryPlate has been a fantastic interim from the everyday monotony of trying to figure out what to eat. With its easy to use system, ingredients, and simplicity we have found a new groove that works for us. Hopefully this helps you maek and informed decision and allows you to try something new that might work as it has for us!