Recently, a friend of mine gifted me a free week of Blue Apron. If you haven’t heard of it, it’s a service that sends you a box full of groceries and three recipes to cook in a given week. Since I’ve been terrible about wasting food recently, I figured it would give it a try.
Maybe it’s that pesky Yankee upbringing, but after this first week it seems like the most wasteful, pointless service geared towards millennials like me who want fresh food with a minimum of effort.
Trying new food is one of life’s great pleasures, and it’s great that Blue Apron encourages less experienced home cooks to get familiar with new ingredients without investing in a lot of expensive spices. But I couldn’t help but feel guilt about the amount of packaging used to to send the ingredients along and break up the amounts for each recipe. This was only part of the packaging from tonight’s meal. Most of this isn’t recyclable in my area. Someone, think of the birds!
If I’m going to spend a half hour or more preparing food, it should last for longer than one meal. Why not roast an entire squash and eat for two days? Make a veggie casserole and eat off the leftovers later in the week. For all the chopping Blue Apron requires, I could make enough veggie salads to feed a crowd.
Thanks for the free food, Blue Apron. But I’m not interested in continuing. And I hope you reply to my email asking to cancel before you ship my next meal despite your “high email volume” so I don’t have to put a stop payment order on your charge.
Amy Derjue 