> I wish it was possible to buy decent home cooked food for a reasonable fee :(
I mean that’s pretty much what supermarkets sell right? Ready meals that can be heated, which are effectively cooked the same way as at the home but just on an industrial scale. Or pasta that’s pre-made and pre-filled and you just have to heat and add some sauce that’s already pre-made.
Im in the UK where we have services like Cook that are good quality meals you can heat up.
>There have been many days where I would have been happy to eat food from one of 10 different places, and we picked one more or less at random.
That seems like a nightmare. I sure don't want to go through the trouble of making 10 different orders just to save 10%. If I wanted to jump through that many hoops I'd pick it up myself.
> Problem with shopping once a week is I would have to decide for 7 breakfasts, 7 meals and at least 6 dinners. That is a lot of planning and live very little room for improvisation unless you are wiling to waste things or have a giant refrigerator which I have no room for in my european kitchen.
I think that is an overestimate because you can have leftovers and also breakfast is generally pretty easy, but I agree that there is greater planning overhead.
My partner and I compile a list of all the meals we want to make for the next two weeks before shopping, if you get in the habit it doesn't take too too long.
>Strange, I've found doing meal prep one day a week that you partition into fixed quantities for each day to be way easier than making a meal every day
I can't stand eating the same thing multiple days a week. Are you preparing multiple different meals for each day, one day a week?
Not to mention that it's never going to be as nice as a freshly-cooked meal anyway.
Not really. Small grocery stores lack variety (by necessity, when their potential market is limited to families living in a 1-2 mile radius). Two restaurants lack variety. It makes for stupidly boring food choices over time.
Frankly, I'd end up not using them, ordering even more over the internet, and interacting even less with folks nearby.
Rant: the solution is to learn how to read a recipe and cook without a paint by numbers erector set that has an unreasonable packaging:food ratio.
I’m fine with these services as a ‘gateway drug’ to independently cooking for yourself, but they’re insane as a long term thing.
(Not to mention that I have no idea how they stay viable in the long term, given their customer acquisition costs. If anyone makes it work in the long term it will be Amazon/Whole Foods.)
>The simple dishes, like a sandwich, I would honestly like to be able to make my self, but that doesn't scale down well. A family, sharing the bread, meat, and greens, is really required to make that more economic.
Seriously? You buy a loaf of bread and some cold cuts (or rotisserie chicken or whatever), mustard, mayo. Absolutely no trouble getting a week's worth of food for one person.
Yes, you can absolutely cook at home. I admit that I don't have access to good ethnic takeout or restaurants, so I'm inclined to cook, but I'm pretty sure that I save money as well.
> Who doesn't like the sound of buying a home cooked meal from a neighbor?
It'd take a lot for me to consider it, because it creates all kinds of awkwardness if the quality is poor, and I'd have little reason to trust that they'd deliver consistent quality.
It'd need to be far cheaper than any alternative, and I'd need to not afford the alternatives, before I'd consider something like that.
> What would you do if your grocery bill went from $150 a week to $300 or more?
It depends on why, and whether I could afford it. If one can afford a 100% bump in food expenses, and can effect it by choosing to buy better food, then it would be worth it in my opinion. The problem to me is that real, sustainable food is basically impossible to come by. I’ve tried farmers markets, etc, but those establishments aren’t about “real” eating either. Americans shopping at all tiers of the food system experience commerce that is entirely catered to a post-seasonal shopping experience. You go to a grocery store and 90% of the shelves aren’t food at all—in the sense that it’s usually some kind of starch and palm oil packaged with salt—then the rest is confused about what time of year it is. If I could spend 200% more on food I would, but seasonal, real food is nowhere to be found. What I want is a real Whole Foods. Such a store would not have shelves of boxed garbage. It would sell dry foodstuffs, out of season produce that keep well in low oxygen chillers (apples, etc) and whatever was in season and is practical for eating. All the food would be highest quality. But such a store wouldn’t exist because Americans must be able to buy rhubarb, salmon and kiwis any time of the year, and won’t come back unless you have them.
Greetings from MD too. MD sheep and wool is coming up:)
>It works out just because the places I can walk to for groceries are incredibly overpriced and the restaurants obviously don't source their food there.
I typically don't buy my groceries from the gas station despite them having a half gallon of milk for $4 and it being 3 minutes walking away.
I also don't use gas station numbers to determine if something is cheaper or more expensive.
> they already have most of these ingredients sitting in their fridge
That's exactly the issue - I don't have ingredients sitting in my fridge. I don't conveniently live near a large supermarket. I don't own a car. I cook mostly for myself, and very occasionally a few friends. When I come home from work late, the last thing I want to think about is spending almost an hour going to the store, browsing and buying stuff, coming back.
To do that, first I also have to decide what exactly to cook, which is a big enough ordeal. I don't want to cook something fancy, because that means I have to get many ingredients that I'll half-use and never touch again until they go bad. Usually the simple stuff is OK but gets repetitive after a while, and leftover ingredients are still a problem.
Meal delivery fixes all that - healthy, fresh and tasty meals by default, no thought or effort required.
I guess if there was an app that decided on a meal schedule and pre-filled an instacart order, I'd do that, but again it's hard to optimize leftover ingredients and costs per meal.
> Does anyone else actually enjoy going to the grocery store or walking to a local place to pick up food?
Nope, not at all.
Any kind of shopping is pain in the ass to me. It takes time away from any of the many other things in my life I would rather be doing.
Food shopping as an example is a necessity as I need food to give me the energy to get back to doing those things I enjoy. It's a chore like doing doing the dishes, washing your clothes or cleaning your home.
> my strategy is to only go shopping at supermarkets when [...] and i already have enough food back at home to survive with out needing to go grocery shopping for a few days.
Great strategy, but if you ever have interruptions that cause you to empty out the larder, you will then starve since you can't shop.
Oh, wait... you're probably a human being not a computer program. Sorry: it's a kind of a reflexive code review process for me by now.
> Not everybody has 5 hours a day or a stay-at-home wife to cook their Whole Foods organic produce into a masterpiece of nutrition.
I'm guessing from this that you've never cooked in your life?
(Hint: Pretty much nobody cooks five hours a day unless it is their job. I mostly cook for myself, and I don't think I've ever really spent more than 30 minutes of active work on it).
I do actual cooking too, but the turn around between buying ingredients and eating them is like 3 hours. Where my parents do weekly shopping. So tons of 2 week old stuff lurking behind other stuff etc.
>you are being bad
Def am on packaging. Quite difficult to buy stuff in bachelor compatible portions without it being a environmental shitshow.
> If you can afford Blue Apron, you can afford to buy 3x as much food and have control over your ingredient choice by just going to your goddamn supermarket.
If you ignore time costs, sure; pre-measured ingredients in the quantity necessary for the recipe provided is a huge time saver.
Yes, it creates waste, but it's not without utility.
>It will soon be just as cheap to have your food prepared and delivered as going to the grocery store and making it yourself.
No, no it won't. Why would a person claim something so ridiculous? I can understand if you never leave your little Soho / Bay bubble, but do real actual people honestly think this?
I'm sorry, I seriously doubt that.
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