We tried a bunch of meal delivery kits, and here’s what we think

 

If you — like 35 percent of your peers — have recently moved to a new place, you might find yourself in an unfamiliar, frigid city on this fourth Thursday in November. Loved ones are hard to come by, because making friends in a new city is quietly, enormously difficult — and now a plane ticket home costs more than your rent. The thought of going to a grocery store to prepare an attempt at a Thanksgiving meal for yourself is enough to drive you to drink your dinner. But spending time in the kitchen can be truly therapeutic: you work with your hands and produce something that, if all goes to plan, will nourish you and taste good. The act of cooking nutritious, somewhat complex meals for oneself is a mark of many things: adulthood, authority over one’s personal health, and maybe even learning how to make sustainable food choices. Are the same things accomplished when you have all the elements of a meal designed, compiled, and transported (in a monumental amount of packaging) by someone else for you? We took it upon ourselves to try out four meal-kit delivery services — Blue Apron, Sun Basket, Hello Fresh, and The Purple Carrot — to try out the experience for you, dear reader. Watch our video to find out which ones we liked best.