Previously, if we had a rare night with time to plan and cook dinner, it would be a production: I would insist on sifting through a box of clippings of recipes I’ve been wanting to try schlep to the grocery store with the list in hand and overpurchase every item and then begin cooking, so that by the time we ate it might be 10pm, and worse, the unused produce would live out the remainder of its life in the fridge. But we both dislike waste, and while some complain that the packaging on meal kit delivery services is excessive, which it is, I am of the school of thought that waste from over-purchasing ingredients is worse. While I am a restaurant lover, my significant other deems dining out unhealthy (one of many ways in which we are opposites). There are many reasons this works for us where it might not for others.

We are in possession of a Blue Apron zester and a Blue Apron binder for our Blue Apron recipe cards. About a year ago, we added Blue Apron Wine to the mix, so now every month we also get a delivery of six mini-bottles of wines to pair with the meals. We have kept it going during Thanksgiving and through the holidays.

In 22 months, we have paused the service only once, for one week (another time we gave our weekly box to our neighbors). We have never not cooked everything we were sent. Our weekly delivery arrives on Thursday mornings like clockwork, and three nights a week we cut, chop, prep, and cook one of its organically sourced, creative, perfectly measured, and just-complex-enough meals for two. We have cooked a grand total of 279 dinners.

Cut to almost 2 years later, and much to my complete and utter shock, we have become Blue Apron superusers.

Blue apron last week