Blue apron

Does anybody use this service? feelings about it?

I think lowly of it and the people who use it.

>$10/meal
You still have to fucking cook everything, why wouldnt you just go buy the ingredients yourself for half the price

Because it doesn't work that way. You can't buy 3 leaves of lettuce, or a teaspoon of horseradish, or a chive. So it's not really half the price, it is, in fact, about the same.
I use it. It's fine. If you're some kind of autist who thinks that food is magically worse if it came in a cardboard box instead of in a grocery bag, then, I guess, don't use it. My favorite Veeky Forums argument against it is "OMG I can't stand if someone else handles my food", like they think that the produce they buy at Safeway just materialized out of nowhere via divine intercession.

I have visited or lived places in rural edges of suburbia where it was hard to buy bok choy, anchovy paste, guava, or just more than one type of mushrooms.
I suppose you and your mate might enjoy opening a box and trying out some step by step directions to learn some new recipes with someone else doing all the shopping. You're paying for a service, probably assume it's got a 30% markup. Maybe even it is analogous to paying restaurant prices for your meals, but you're doing all the work! Sometimes I do enjoy having some leftovers, not exact portions, like celery for the next idea that comes along, or a big container of cream to enjoy the rest of the week in my coffee. But, hrm, from a diet perspective, you're portioned out with these people. Hope you count calories and enjoy that control.
After you make something a couple of times, you do learn your technique and tweak your recipe...therein lies the skill that can make you a better cook. I'm sure this is more like just good for the lazy person. After a good repertoire under your belt, you can dump this service and just know you can get your inspiration from, uhh, cookbooks and do your own shopping, provided of course you live somewhere urban enough, rich enough, that you can get good grocery selections beyond Wal-Mart.

Or you live in an urban area but those are sold at separate stores, one per ethnicity

But hey if you want to spend your time heading to a bunch of different stores to pick up random ingredients and that makes you feel like a "hard working urban rich good cook", then sure, it's your time

I don't like the concept of it, but I guess my biggest gripe about it is if you're new to cooking and you're given the exact amount of everything you need to cook, it makes you less inclined to experiment with it. If I make a recipe that I found online or taste some good at a restaurant and want to try it myself, I'm going to adjust it to what I think would taste better to me.

> buy the same ingredients for half the price, and fresher when you picked it out yourself.

I really don't get it. Especially with the internet, you can research things you might want to eat, go buy the ingredients for half price, or often times less, and cook a possibly better recipe than theirs.

It's almost like women want to say, "well, I got the ingredients from "them" and I cooked according to their insructions, but the meal sucked so it was their fault.

what do your relationship issues have to do with food? please be as detailed as possible.

I kind of like the idea, but there's no doubt it's a ripoff.

I like the idea of having a recipe and all the ingredients I need right there in front of me, so I can try something I might not have ordinarily thought of, add it to my repertoire, rinse and repeat. Yeah, I can look up recipes (although most internet recipes are atrociously bad) but do I really want to go out and buy a bunch of lemongrass, galangal, and a gallon of fermented snake testicles just for one meal? And then I have to hope that I can find a store that has all these in my area.

I don't know. I like the idea, but there will never be an implementation that isn't shitty.