Dinner Not Just Food

Recently I signed up for Blue Apron and received my first meal package two weeks ago. The ingredients and recipes for three dinners came an insulated box:

Here's the whole package spread out on our stove:

You can see there's full pieces of produce, bagged ingredients, protiens, and instruction cards.

First up was the salmon & ferro salad

I had my doubts of how this was going to come together, not because of the recipe or ingredients, but my own ineptitude toward seasoning. This ended up being so tasty and satisfying. I've been off fish most of my pregnancy, but this salmon delivered. Plus there was enough "salad" leftover as a side dish for Mr. Keller's lunch the next day. 

A few nights later I made chicken with caramelized fennel and jasmine rice. 

I actually did not try this dish. I had a soar throat and opted for a can of good old Campbell's chicken noodle. Mr. Keller said it was very yummy. We worked on this dish together. I did the prep and the rice while he cooked the chicken. And even though we didn't enjoy this "together" we did have fun making it and bumping into each other in our galley kitchen. 

Lamb Sausage

 Okay, you had me at sausage. This was so hearty and flavorful and sausage!!!! And by the 3rd go round I had my prep routine well underhand. Even though the directions are all like "start cooking the lentils and while they are steaming prep your produce" I need to prep produce before anything else and get that organized before turning on the stove. My cramped kitchen just doesn't lend itself for cooking while chopping since I use my electric stove as my counter top.

Here are the recipe/instruction cards. The visuals are great 

General Thoughts:

1. More chopping then I had anticipated. I'm not chef, let a lone a very experienced home cook, and I found the general direction of "mince garlic clove" to be a bit overwhelming but that's on me. I'm a 30ish year old woman and by this point in my life should be able to mince a garlic clove, right? 

2. How do you recycle the cooling pads? The freezer pads are freakin' huge and yeah are great to have 1 or 2 for reuse, but a new "set" every week, my freezer is just not equipped. Some googling will have to be done. 

3. These are set up as entrees, and I'm a fan of some veg on the side, so I may just do up some steamed broccoli or sprouts for subsequent meals. 

4. No Leftovers... :( We opted for the dinner for 2 plan, which doesn't leave much leftover for lunch the next day. 

5. Very tasty and healthy, which really should be higher up on this numbered list in terms of importance and takeaways, but I'm going stream-of-consciousness with this outline. 

6. Less expensive then going out for dinner with that level of entree. 

7. You can keep the recipe cards!!

8. Becoming a better at-home cook/maker of dinner.

So yeah, I think we'll keep up with Blue Apron for a few months, we'll see how feasible it is once this baby arrives in terms of time and cost. But, overall very pleased with the experience.