My First Blue Apron Box

My friend Bekah started subscribing to Blue Apron which claims to be a "better way to cook."  Their slogan is 'fresh ingredients, great recipes, delivered weekly to your home."  She had a voucher for a free week of meals and asked if I would want to try it out. Free food for a week? Count me in! 

I signed up on their website and selected the meats I liked- which was all of them in case you are wondering.  They have several meat options, and also vegetarian boxes.  

A few weeks later I got the email that my Blue Apron box had been shipped and the next day it was on my porch full of fresh ingredients!  The box has 99% of the things you need to cook the meals; ingriedient wise you need olive oil, salt, and pepper and kitchen wise you need (at least for my meals) one pot, one pan, a cutting board, and a knife!

There are also ingredient cards for each recipe broken down into 6 sections.  Each section has a few lines of recipes but they are very easy to follow. 

The first night we tried out Seared Steak with Mashed Potatoes with sauteed radishes and snap peas.

Tada!  It was REALLY good!  We both wished there was more meat, but we were both very satisifed and not yucky full.  This meal clocked in at 700 calories which I feel like could have been cut down a bit by not eating the mashed potatoes.  There were a LOT of potaotes. 

After we finished eating I asked Matt if he liked radishes and he told me he didn't- silly boy thought those red things were potatoes. So ladies, if you want to trick your man into eating radishes, just pretend they are potatoes!!  There was some kind of lemon-pepper sauce that was DELICIOUUUUUSSS.

The second night we had more lemon and radishes- Matt knew they were radishes tonight, so don't let the cat out of the bag!!

The second night we had Seared Cod with Spring Vegetables and Lemon- Mustard vinaigrette. It wasn't as good as the steak, but it was 200 calories less.  I mean honestly, who would choose cod over steak if that was an option.  MAYYYBBEE salmon, but not cod.

Our final meal in the box was Hoisin Glazed Chicken Meatballs with Zucchini and Brown Rice. This one was a LOT of food. I probably could have taken leftovers to lunch but it would have been mostly rice.  I didn't even plate all of the rice and neither Matt nor I ate all the rice on our plate. This dish had a LOT of flavor! There was a spicy sauce that you added depending on your liking and I used the whole thing. YUM! This dish was also 700 calories but I felt like it was a lot more- so I guess that's a good thing?

 

Overall I really liked Blue Apron and will probably order it again!  I thought the $59.95 price tag was steep, but then breaking it down to $10 a meal it didn't seem so bad.  Matt and I spend way more than that going out all the time.  All 3 meals were tasty, left us satisfied, and only took about 30-40 minutes total for prepping and cooking.  You can check the calendar and see what meals are coming for the next few weeks and 'skip' the ones you don't want.  I think this will be in the rotation about once a month from now on.  Fun, easy, healthy- the only downside is having to do dishes!