We've tried

• Blue Apron
• Hello Fresh
• Home Chef

in that order and have now cycled back to Hello Fresh. My husband is the family chef and the family grocery shopper. I am the one who chooses the recipes a few days at a time. I'm honestly surprised that he is enjoying these services as much as he is but he likes having all the ingredients in one place and is making some dishes that are out of the norm for us.

Here are my comments on each service:

Blue Apron - tried this first, thought it was good, but now that we have tried others it is unlikely we will return to it. You get the ingredients for the 3 meals intermixed in a box with a separate bag for the seasonings for each of the meals. The meat is frozen. We only cook with fresh meat. While you are shown 6 choices, once you make your first choice, a couple of the choices are removed as options.

Home Chef - this offered the greatest variety of dishes. But oddly, we can't have it delivered before Wednesday. The boxes come from the LA area and can be delivered to San Diego on Tuesday. We live 25 miles north on the coast. I wrote to the company but was told that deliveries can only be made when FedEx/UPS says they can and that isn't Tuesday for us. I prefer to get the boxes on Tuesday as we are often out and about on the weekend.

HelloFresh - at the moment, this is our favorite. All ingredients other than meat come in one box. Pull that box from the refrigerator, find the corresponding protein, and begin to cook. The meat is fresh, not frozen. And we can get Tuesday delivery.

None of the 3 services we have tried have a way to keep a record of successful and not so successful recipes on the site. I'd love to have that offered as part of our account.