Tag: Blue Apron

Taco Tuesday is Great and All, But…

This post is sponsored by Blue Apron. If you’d like to give it a try, you can get your own first box with 3 free meals when you sign up here!

Brandon does the cooking for us just about every night. He also does the grocery shopping. And he’s great at it!

Alas, I am no help at all when it comes to meal planning.

I wish I was someone who knew how to take some garlic, tomatoes, and whatever else and turn it into something new and inventive, but I’m not. Neither of us are. It’s easy to put things on autopilot when we’re busy and we cook the same meals over and over.

We love Blue Apron because it gets us out of our dinner rut, especially during busy times like the holiday season. Everything can be made in 40 minutes or less, each menu is between 500-800 calories per person, and you get all the fresh ingredients you need in exactly the right proportions. If you don’t need a week, skip it. (You can skip or cancel at any time.)

And ahem… New Year’s resolutions, anyone? More cooking at home. Healthier meals. Check and check.

Sometimes the recipes are for meals that are completely new to us, and sometimes they’re reminders to make something we’ve had before that sort of fell out of the rotation. Like a couple of weeks ago, one of our dinners was pork chops and yellow tomato sauce, with roasted potatoes and broccoli.

Broccoli is one of my favorites, but we had gotten into the habit of either eating it raw with a dip or steaming it. Why had we not been roasting our broccoli lately? It’s so easy to make, but so good!

The broccoli and potatoes were both supporting players to the main dish, the pork chops. Tasty! I think the tomatoes that went on top would be equally good on chicken (look at me, sort of experimenting). It was a new dish for our family, but nothing so out there that the kids would balk.

Speaking of the kids… We’re a family of 5, and we’ve gone with both types of plans (2-Person or Family Plan). I’m sure my kids’ appetites will increase as they get bigger, but for now we can get away with the 2-Person plan if Brandon and I each share a little of our portions, or the Family Plan which usually leaves us with leftovers.

You can see what’s coming up weeks in advance. Blue Apron is always adding new dishes to the menu every week, and you can choose any combination of recipes for each delivery. Instead of the old standby ‘Taco Tuesday’ (great but predictable), we might look forward to ‘spicy honey-lime chicken tostadas‘ or ‘mushroom & potato tacos with avocado & cara cara orange salad.’

See? We wouldn’t think to plan those dinners, but we would all sure want to eat them! Yum. The variety of recipes is what I love about Blue Apron the most.

p.s. Yes, the first 50 readers to take advantage of this offer will get 3 meals free in their first Blue Apron order! Just click here to visit Blue Apron.

December 5, 2017
Know Any Good Cast Iron Jokes?

Sponsored by Blue Apron.

Most people know the basics of cooking. But did you know that in order to make a meal truly special, you must begin by arranging all of your ingredients in pretty bowls and placing them on and around the antique kitchen scale your husband balked at? It’s true. Do not skip this step. No substitutions.

Brandon was a little confused by the scale’s arrival, seeing as how we don’t have all that much counter space in our kitchen, but I showed him, didn’t I. Everyone appoints their kitchens according to an item’s photogenic qualities, yes? (It could have been much worse.)

And it’s cast iron, which goes nicely with our cast iron stove and my new cast iron braiser. I haven’t seen Inception, so I had to ask Brandon if it was an appropriate reference for making a joke here. All I know is it’s a dream about a dream inside a dream… swap out the “dream” with “cast iron” and there’s a joke in there somewhere. No? He said no. So I challenged him to come up with something better, which he could not, because it seems I had not stumbled upon the comedic goldmine I thought I had.

I do love that new braiser though. I’ve cooked with cast iron and baked with enameled cast iron before, but I would have normally used our big stainless steel sauté pan for a dish like this (chicken bolognese & rigatoni pasta with mascarpone cheese from our latest Blue Apron delivery). The braiser is about the same size, but it regulates the heat much better on our crazy stove and it was still easy to clean. Plus, it is a lovely shade of pink.

I did not have something suitably twee for making the summer squash-arugula salad, and so I had to settle for a perfectly useful but not terribly cute stainless steel mixing bowl. My assistant made up for it with added cuteness, which was welcome — though she did keep stealing slices of the squash.

Look, the scale is useful once again!

That pasta was tasty. I don’t think I had cooked with mascarpone before, and it added a nice creaminess. That’s part of why I like Blue Apron: there’s usually an interesting ingredient or twist on a classic dish that we wouldn’t have thought of. Having the meal planning done for us is awesome too, and everything ships for free. If you want to get an idea of what you get, you can browse their recipes. Don’t the Thai-spiced salmon and hoisin-glazed chicken thighs look good?

The Family Plan with a delivery once a week works for us, but they also offer two shipments per week or a smaller 2-Person Plan, and you can skip or cancel any time. I’m always happy to share them on the blog, and Blue Apron is offering the first 100 readers that sign up here two free meals on their first Blue Apron order!

And I was close to something with the cast iron thing there, right?

July 29, 2015
“Boxed Cooking Experience”

This post is sponsored by Blue Apron.

We’ve been using Blue Apron throughout the past year or so, and most recently, we made their Swedish-style turkey meatballs. I told the kids that we were having meatballs for dinner like the ones we get at IKEA, and I got cheers in response. “YAAAAYY!” Then Brandon was like, “um, you better tell them that they aren’t exactly the same meatballs.” (You know how kids can be sometimes with food and expectations and such.) I did, and they were still on board! Cooking time.

The dinner turned out perfectly. Do you use ground turkey very often? Whenever we make meatballs, we’ve always used ground beef, but I couldn’t tell the difference. I suppose this is healthier, right? Right. (All of their meals are chef-designed and between 500-700 calories per serving.) The kids loved ’em too.

You can skip deliveries any time you’d like, but I wasn’t thinking properly about my schedule last week. We get the Family Plan that comes with two meals, each for four people. We made the Swedish meatballs dinner right away, but then I went out of town the next night! It was the first trip I’d gone on since having Calvin. Brandon’s great at holding down the fort and taking care of the kids, but having all three (and dealing with a baby that’s not fond of taking a bottle) was going to be rough, so he gave our other meal (pan-seared steaks and salsa verde) to his mom. I’ve talked about Blue Apron with my mother-in-law before because she knew that we had been using it, but I don’t think she realized how good the food is until she tried it herself. I got this photo from her while I was away.

Subject line: “Boxed cooking experience.” (LOL.) Email text: “WOW!” (Also, how fun is she? I love that she thought to take a picture.)

Blue Apron adds new recipes every week and we’ve always been impressed by how tasty they are. I wish I was better at planning meals and searching out new things to make, but the truth is, I’m just not. It isn’t one of my strengths, so I love that they make getting a good dinner on the table easier. I want to try making their chilaquiles some time too; I love it but have never made it myself! Same with Thai food, like their spicy thai chicken noodle soup. I would love to know how to make it at home instead of relying on take-out.

Blue Apron is available nationwide with free shipping to over 80% of the country. If you want to try the service out, they’re offering the first 50 readers two meals off of their first Blue Apron order for free! I think it’s such a smart solution for people like us who want to cook, but aren’t great at sitting down to plan everything out and come up with new ideas every week. They’ve made our dinners so much better.

April 28, 2015
No More Excuses

Sponsored by Blue Apron.

Do you eat dinner together as a family every night? We do, but until a couple of weeks ago, we didn’t always finish together. Eleanor and August know that they have to ask “may I be excused?” before they leave the table. (I highly recommend teaching your kids to do this too, because once they’re in the habit and they do it in front of company or at a friend’s house, they look super-polite and you get a million parenting points. Grandparents especially notice.) The problem is that we started getting to the point where the kids would each finish their meal and immediately ask to be excused — leaving the rest of us still at the table. So now we’re trying a new rule where they stay at the table until everyone is done.

The pictures in this post are from a dinner we made over the weekend: blood orange roasted salmon, from Blue Apron.

I’ve partnered with Blue Apron before, and I’m happy to continue to do so. They deliver fresh ingredients to your door, saving you a trip to the grocery store, and delivering exactly the right proportions for each recipe. I like it because the recipes don’t take too long (40 minutes or less), and they push me to include extra touches that I wouldn’t think to add otherwise. Do I usually top my food with pepitas or use a blood orange in place of a regular one? No, and adding them made our dinner feel more special, like we were getting a restaurant-style meal at home.

The recipe we made called for the salmon to be roasted, which meant cooking in our unpredictable antique oven. We’re pretty used to its quirks and we do often make fish in it, but I finally bought an oven thermometer so now we know that “Hot” actually means 500 degrees. (I suppose that’s why we’ve never seen the gauge go all the way to “Very Hot.” Can you imagine?)

You know the pink dishes I painted last week? I went and picked some up, and let me tell you — everything looks prettier on a pink plate!

Using gold flatware helps too, as demonstrated by my little hand model. She was a big fan of the salmon.

So, the new rule? It’s working so far! The kids are getting an exercise in patience, waiting until everyone has finished before being excused, and it’s giving us a little more time to sit at the table as a family and talk. Of course, a lot of that ‘talk’ is made up of little kid jokes that don’t make any sense, but it’s still nice. (And won’t the grandparents be impressed!)

If you’d like to try Blue Apron, I have a discount offer to share with you. The first 50 readers to sign up via Making it Lovely get two free meals on their first Blue Apron order!

The service is available nationwide to over 80% of the country. The plans have changed a little since I last wrote about the service and they now offer two types: the 2-Person Plan and Family Plan. We use the Family Plan, which is designed for a family of four (or more, if your kids are little and don’t eat a ton at each meal). Each delivery has enough food for two meals to be served family-style, you can choose to receive either one or two deliveries per week. The price is $69.92 per delivery ($8.74/serving) but there’s also a 2-Person plan offering one delivery a week with three meals for $59.94 ($9.99/serving). The food arrives in a refrigerated box so the ingredients will stay fresh, and they have a Blue Apron market with kitchenware, should you find yourself wanting to add a few new tools to your arsenal. They add new dishes all the time, shipping is always free, and there’s no commitment — you can skip or cancel whenever you’d like to.

January 20, 2015