What We Tried – Blue Apron

Since Christmas, we have been spicing it up a bit with our dinners. A friend had been using Blue Apron and was nice enough to gift us a week of meals that she had been offered through her own subscription. Seriously, they won us over and our one week subscription turned into three. Then it was back to two again because of the snow storm in the northeast. But mostly, the timing was perfect. Post Christmas blahs, busy getting back into the routine, and the routine changing based on the stage of my treatment we were in. We were really in a rut and this helped us to resist the urge to break the blahs with take out.Blue Apron sends us three meals for two people each week. When the package arrives, it has the fresh ingredients measured and labeled with three recipes to try. Once it is delivered all packaged up and on ice, I just take it all out and use one of the drawers in our refrigerator to keep it all together. We have found that the meals could, in most cases, easily stretch to at least three servings and sometimes four. You can specify your dietary preferences and we have done that so our choices my not reflect what a typical menu would include if you just signed up and let them send you whatever they might pick.

Our kick off week using the service coincided with my getting the green light to change my diet in an effort to lose weight. I had been cautioned during the first two portions of my treatment that they did not want to see me lose weight or really change my diet too radically since it can put stress on your body. While I may not agree with that entirely, I did understand and respect what they were saying. With all the medicine I was on and the side effects, losing weight was not an easy thing once the quick post partum weight loss happened. So, getting back to the point, the menus we have been given have been reasonably healthy and weight loss friendly for me based on the nutritional preferences we provided, with a few exceptions. We have been eating more fish for sure! Their portions of pasta are a bit too big to say this is a good plan for weight loss across the board, but when we make those again in the future we are already decided to use less pasta and bulk up the vegetables compared to their original suggestions.

Another reason we have liked this service, we have had the opportunity to try recipes and ingredients we would never seek to try on our own. I don’t generally plan a meal around some Sambal Oelek, which is apparently a spicy pepper paste now that I have googled it. Even though the exact recipe they send us is not necessarily how we would go back and make it in the future, how great to even have a half a dozen out of nine be new ideas to work into the rotation and adapt to suit our preferences. To give you an idea of the meals we have received, or were scheduled to receive, to date:

• Chicken Mulligatawny Soup with Kohlrabi and Basmati Rice
• Pistachio-Crusted Catfish with Clementine Salad, Israeli Couscous, and Roasted Fennel
• Whole Wheat Linguine with Kale, Red Walnuts, and Pecorino Cheese
• Chicken Charlemagne with Roasted Root Vegetables and Parsnip-Potato Mash
• Banana Leaf Steamed Cod with Spiced Rice, Yu Choy, and Coconut
• Crispy Brown Butter Gnocchi with Meyer Lemon and Brussel Sprouts
• Buffalo Style Chicken Drumsticks with Blue Cheese Salad and Celery-Apple Salad (cancelled order)
• Shrimp & Pineapple Fried Rice with Cashews and Sambal Oelek (cancelled order)
• White Pizza with Meyer Lemon and Arugula-Brussel Sprouts Salad (cancelled order)

Lucky for me I have a recent new obsession with Brussel Sprouts as I recently had them again and found out that they are amazing. Seriously. Add that to my zucchini and asparagus obsessions. Not so lucky for you, I was planning on taking pictures of the third shipment once I decided to write about this, and as I said above, it was cancelled by Blue Apron. If we get another shipment soon, I will take pictures of the packaging so that you can have a better idea of how things are sent. So that can happen apparently. Another lucky thing for us, we still had enough food in the house to put together meals once it was cancelled after the snow had started.

Economically speaking, it is not a wash for what we would normally spend on groceries for the same amount of time per person per meal. But obviously our grocery bills have been lower and the trips faster since they are doing the meal planning, shopping, and so forth and just sending it to us. There is a “price” for the convenience that we were willing to pay to try this. We also usually don’t eat such well planned gourmet type meals so if we grocery shopped in a similar manner, we might spend more since there is usually waste for produce that you just don’t end up using when you aren’t cooking for an army.

Most of the meals have not been That Little Girl friendly. They do offer family meal plans, so if she were a more adventurous eater I would have altered our plan to include her. Then we would have had leftovers since they go straight to a family of four for the family plan. Once you are in a family plan, you can choose to have deliveries twice a week and other options from what I understand.

So that is what is happening here and what we are trying in an effort to shake things up out of the dinner time rut! And now we have a couple free weeks to send out. Let me know if you would like to try it!