Exploring the Success of Meal Prep Services in the U.S.

 I pick two weeks that look like they will be very busy and plan to point and click until most of my days are set to be provided by meal kits. Several websites tell me that this will let me get "interesting yet simple" recipes with "balanced and varied" ingredients sent right to my door for about $10 per person. I'm going to skip the grocery store lines and the fight every week at the farmers' market for eggs and albacore tuna. When my husband and I don't feel like eating something from another country, we usually eat what he calls the "house meal," which is broccoli rabe sautéed with eggs, borlotti beans, and toast.Plated sent the first set of kits. At 7 p.m., I open a big cardboard box and find recipes with bright pictures inside. The recipe for today is for Sweet Potatoes on a Sheet Pan with Bok Choy and Sesame-Scallion Sauce. Even though I follow the directions, everything takes longer to cook than it should. Still, it's pretty much what I like to eat for dinner, and I really liked having shiitake mushrooms, which I don't usually buy.

Salmon with a maple ginger glaze and Brussels sprout hash is on the menu for Tuesday

The box had Alaskan salmon and cod that were frozen and vacuum-packed. I put both of them in the fridge overnight to thaw, but they're still a little cold. Running them under a hot water faucet works, but it doesn't improve their texture. This is one reason why I usually pass on frozen fish if I have to choose between it and something else. I cook the fish in a pan. I choose not to "glaze," so I do not. There's more mutiny next: It seems like too many veggies, so I set the potatoes aside. They need to cook for twice as long and with twice as much olive oil as the recipe says. They come out tasty, with some dark spots and crisp edges, but I wonder if a less experienced cook might have done worse.Another worry has come to light: according to this plan, I need to cook and pack up tonight's dinner in order to make tomorrow's lunch. That's pretty much what I do with Sheet Pan Cod Puttanesca with Fingerling Potatoes, Olives, and Tomatoes. In spite of this, I pan-fry the cod, make a salad with the puttanesca sauce, and add the fingerling potatoes to the growing pile of raw fingerling potatoes I already have. This works great.Notice of AdI get the feeling that the cooks at Plated are much more driven than I am. On our dinner menus, I don't use prepositions, conjunctions, hyphens, or conjunctions. That or "greens" might be there. I wonder if the 40 percent drop in American home food since 1965 is due to too much grammatical detail.

A friend who just got back from a long trip to Guinea is coming over for dinner the next night.

This is the same day as my box from HelloFresh, an international company worth $2.8 billion backed by venture capital firm Rocket Internet and pushed by TV personality Jamie Oliver. The menu is a little off-putting, with Winter Risotto with Kale, Fennel Seed, and Parmesan coming after Creamy Pear and Turnip Soup with Radish and Pepitas. The HelloFresh guide has ten pages of recipes: The note says, "This is your ticket to freedom." You will not have to worry about going to the grocery store, getting unhealthy meals or delivery, or wasting food and money. It seems like a patriotic way to come back from a trip abroad: Let freedom rule!My friend makes the soup, and I make the rice. But first I throw away things from both kits: sour cream squeeze packets that look like ketchup, vegetable stock concentrate squeeze packets that taste like liquid granulated onion, and "Parmesan cheese" that has already been shredded. The soup she made mostly tastes like turnips and too much ginger because her pear isn't ripe enough.It tastes like a mistake that the rice was made without wine and with a lot of whole fennel seeds added. (Later, I find that my husband accidentally messed up the recipe by writing "Winter Risotto" and adding black dots to the picture.) We eat bread from a nearby bakery, a round of La Tur, and persimmons as a makeshift dinner. When you use meal kits, everything is easy, but all of your eggs are in one box.Each of the good kits does one thing really well: The Purple Carrot sends a box full of rare vegetables, like a can of heirloom adzuki beans and a beautiful red bitter endive.

The most beautiful kit is from Marley Spoon.

Jennifer Aaronson, who used to be the food and entertaining head at Martha Stewart Living, runs the U.S. branch of the company. The decor and menu have a soft, feminine feel to them. All of the meals are topped with something raw, bright, and green, like herbs, kimchi, or small vegetable salads. There is a lot of care put into the Blue Apron kit. For example, it tells cooks to zest a lime before squeezing its juice to get the most taste out of it and to fully use the lime. It also explains what a "fond" is and how it works.One of the best things about the kits is that they don't waste food. Plated wants to waste 3.5% of all the food it buys, while Blue Apron wants to waste 2%. Both are better than the 40% of food that goes to waste after a grocery store sale, which doesn't include food that goes bad in the crisper box. Even though I'd rather just pick off the browned leaves and blue mold and get back to work, getting rid of that much trash is clearly good for the earth.The package, on the other hand, makes me think. Fruits and vegetables are packed in Styrofoam bags, ice packs, and plastic wrap. Meat and fish are packed in ice packs. Even though the way I cook is very Depression-era, the way I bring my tote bags to market is pretty standard. After dinner, people now spend a long time taking down boxes and rolling up plastic wrap. The trash and two recycling bins are getting too big for the kitchen.