I’ve cooked from subscription boxes for several months, and I’ve enjoyed the experience, but it’s time to move on.

Subscription boxes helped me overcome my fear of new foods.  This fear was the Number One Reason for using subscription boxes, and I’ve been more successful than I thought possible when I started this endeavor.

The boxes also helped me make the jump from restaurants to home cooking by removing my personal Scylla and Charybdis, meal planning and shopping.  Removing those barriers moved me several steps closer to the kitchen, and I’m grateful to HomeChef and Plated for making that happen.

I’d like to continue using subscription boxes, but the meals are not budget-friendly.  I want to stress the meals are reasonably priced considering the services provided.  Each meal costs about what I’d pay for a meal at a chain restaurant in Texas.  The problem is that I can’t afford restaurant prices for six meals a week.

While I need to move away from subscription boxes, I don’t yet feel ready to control my own menu.  I still need support, which is why I’m moving to a meal planning service.

With a meal planning service, I get recipes and a shopping list.  I’ll have to go to the store, but I won’t have to decide what to eat.  (This is important because if left to my own devices I’d load the cart with popcorn and cupcakes.)

After researching several meal planning services, I settled on Mealime.com.  Mealime met my short list of requirements:

• Vegetarian (and pescatarian) meals.
• Tools to scale the recipes down to two servings.  (I’d still rather have ONE serving, but I’ll take what I can get.)
• An app with a shopping list.  Why should I waste my time copying everything to my phone, or messing with a printer?  Those are potential roadblocks.)
• A focus on meals that can be cooked quickly.
• An effort at zero-waste meals.  For example, if the service asks me to purchase a bunch of cilantro, one recipe may use half the bunch and another recipe will use the remainder.

I’m a little anxious.  I’m not sure I’ll like the meals, and I’m worried the app won’t meet my admittedly picky standards.  The alternative, however — complete mealtime freedom — is worse.  I’m not ready for that responsibility.

We’ll have to see how this goes.