Abdulmalik A.

LEGGINGS: The leggings are excellent quality! My favorites are the seamless, high waisted ones. I love the ombre and the energy leggings that are all part of the seamless collection. They suck you in and lift you in all of the right places, without being too tight.
The only leggings that I didn't feel were super flattering on me were the flex leggings. They hit me on my lower stomach and made that area look less than flattering ha. However, they just came out with some high waisted flex leggings and I am super stoked to try them out!

My experience using Freshly
I can't say enough about how easy Freshly is. My husband and I used another meal subscription box for more than a year, and I grew accustomed to starting meal prep as much as an hour before dinnertime.

At best, with the "express" versions of those other kits, you have 15 minutes of prep and cook time. With Freshly, you don't even have to pull a pan out. Just unbox your meal, pull the plastic back to vent, and cook for about three minutes. You'll then let it rest for a couple of minutes before eating.

If you're expecting what you get after 15-60 minutes over a hot stove, you'll be disappointed. However, the food was surprisingly tasty. Each meal was packed full of flavor. The green beans were crisp and the macaroni and cheese that came with the chicken breast well-exceeded expectations and is a new personal favorite.

My experience using Blue Apron
Overall, using Blue Apron wasn't the best experience, but I think that has more to do with the fact that I enjoy cooking and Blue Apron's fast and easy to cook meals were a little too simple.

Food quality
The food was always fresh when it arrived and could last a few days in the fridge, or, if you need to wait longer to make certain meals, the food was fine being frozen.

Taste
Blue Apron's food never tasted bad, but it didn't taste high quality either. That's likely due to the fact that most of their food simply didn't call for enough spice. Once I added more salt or pepper or chili flake (you get the point), the food was a little better, but still fairly bland.

For the cost of Blue Apron, I don't feel that the food quality is necessarily worth it. You pay upwards of $50 for two meals a week (and that's just dinner), so you'll need to go grocery shopping anyway, and by the time you've bought everything you need, Blue Apron's price doesn't seem very budget friendly.

Recipe cards
For the most part, the recipes led you in the right direction. But, as I said above, for those who have never, or rarely made full meals, the recipe cards can be hard to follow. You're told to do multiple tasks at once—which is hard even for more experienced home cooks, and there's a lot of assumption that you know how to chop vegetables properly, know how to add the right spices, and multi-task.

In my experience with other meal delivery services (Plated, for example), the recipe cards have helpful tips that instruct you how to do every single step, no matter how small.

Taken together, AliExpress offers some really good deals, but not all products are legit. You can get all sorts of counterfeit items there, from electronics to clothing. Some sellers have also been known to defraud buyers by tricking them into paying before they receive an item and then disappearing with the money.

Of course, being able to tell the difference between a legit deal and a ripoff is crucial when buying something from AliExpress.