Blue Apron Adventures

Last week we cooked our first three meals using the Blue Apron delivery service. As I commented in an earlier post, we will not subscribe for weekly deliveries, but will have one delivery per month. Between the cost ($60 for three meals' worth of ingredients and recipes), plus the amount of work necessary for each meal (about an hour of prep and cook for each meal), we just don't have the ability (or patience) to keep up with weekly deliveries right now. But it'll be a fun adventure one week out of the month for sure.

Each meal arrives beautifully packaged and organized in a way that pleases my OCD: spices and additives are pre-measured and labeled for the meals they are intended for; meats come packaged; vegetables come labeled for their destined meals. I love the cute little baggies and bottles the ingredients are in! It's so satisfying to lay everything out. Each meal also has a generously sized recipe card that lists all the ingredients you'll need and also has photos with each cooking step.

The first meal we made was the gnocchi with sausage, which also had savoy cabbage and was cooked in a vinaigrette sauce.

Ingredients for gnocchi night.

This recipe didn't have a tremendous amount of prep, nor were the veggies and meat in need of time-consuming preparations (it was simply chopping cabbage and an onion), but still, by the time we sat down, an hour had somehow elapsed. Below you can see the how-to side of the recipe card as well as the prepared vegetables.

The recipe cards are great because if you like a dish, you can obviously recreate it by just buying the items you don't already have. It's such a great way to explore new recipes and flavors in a relatively safe way--the portions are just right (and often left us with leftovers to have for lunch the following day!).

Just about to plate the completed dish. Yum!

 The second of the two meat meals was stewed chicken with vegetables and latkes. We enjoyed this meal on the first night of Chanukah, which John appreciated because he had been jonesing for some latkes like whoa. Ask and ye shall receive, I suppose. This preparation probably took the longest. There were a lot of vegetables to prapre: chop half an onion, grate the other half; grate potatoes for the latkes; chop carrots and celery; quarter mushrooms; chop herbs. John manned the chicken once all the prep work was finished so I could work on the latkes.

This was the only meal we fully worked on together, simply because it required so much work. It was fun to cook something new together, and was also a dream because we had separate work stations thanks to our kitchen's generous counter space.

The chicken stewing away once we had everything added to the pot.

Getting ready to make me some latkes! Goy ahoy!

Little latkes, all formed and ready to be fried up.

I think I made the latkes a bit thick, but I wanted to be able to fit as many as possible in the pan so I'd be frying in the least amount of batches possible. Had they been thinner, they'd've been crispier, I think, but overall, they came out very good.

Here's the composed meal. The latkes are topped with thyme-infused creme fraiche.

 Our Blue Apron profile is set to send us a mix of meat and vegetarian meals, and this box had a seasonal pasta dish as the veg option. The fresh pasta was mixed with carrots, Brussels sprouts, and chestnuts for a nutty and delicious meal. The finished dish was topped with poppy seeds, granulated honey, and the chopped mint and parsley.

I tell you, I was never more glad for those pre-measured ingredients as for when that granulated honey came into play. I didn't even know that was a thing, so I was very happy to not have to hunt for it. haha

Our next delivery is set for the week of January 5, and I figure it will be a very welcome sight after holiday overindulgences and rich foods. It will be a relief to have a box of fresh and healthy things come right to our doorstep. I'll write about that experience as well. Can't wait to see what they send!

I'll be back later this week with some writeups on my holiday baking adventures, including my first pies and my latest macaron flavor.

Until then, happy end-of-holidays.