Meals delivered to your door.....

Well....sort of....nowadays people can have virtually everything delivered to their door. If you live in the city....game over!!! I mean one hour Amazon delivery?! Faster than 2 days?! Yes, please!! Sadly in our Washington, D.C. Zip code it is still not available. I suppose that is for the better because do I honestly need those Christmas lights that fast, or a industrial strength stick backvelcro?!  Probably not! I've received coupons for Mini Bar which guarantees any alcohol delivered to you in an hour. Am I that desperate?! You have snacks delivered, bark boxes for dogs, you name it and I am pretty sure you can have it delivered.

Those hard working families don't always have time to prepare meals, that is where all these meals on wheels programs come in. We have Galley which deliver hot meals. I am not rich enough to afford my own personal chef....and I also don't need meals prepared for me everyday. I am not that busy. So when someone offered me a code for a free week of Blue Apron meals I thought, why not? I mean free being the key word. I signed up and could choose which day of the week I wanted delivery. I could also choose which week I wanted my meals to start. 

Blue Apron usually posts about 4 weeks worth of meals at a time so you can peruse. They also have you check meat options or if you are vegetarian. I checked no seafood(sadly the hubs is not a fan). 

The week that I chose came with the following 3 recipes:  seared chicken with sautéed purple potatoes, kale and apple, zucchini and parmesan quiches with red leaf lettuce salad and pink lemon vinaigrette. The last item was grains of paradise-crusted steak with mashed plantain, collared greens and ginger peanuts. The nice thing is if you stay on top of your game you go into your account to view upcoming meals and skip those that you do not care for. We are on the 2 person plan which runs about 60$ for three meals. Twenty dollars for a meal isn't awful, but it also isn't the cheapest. Our dietary plan is omnivore. 

When the box arrived I hurriedly opened it and found......

The recipes for all three meals, as well as a little blurb about the apples and what wine to choose- kinda disappointed that the wine wasn't included....haha

I ended up making two of the three meals while my husband ended up making the seared chicken dish. I will say that some require a lot more prep than others.
*Note: make sure to read through all the directions. Sometimes there are ways to cut corners. For example the quiche called for me to cook the spinach, zucchini and garlic separately- too many steps in my mind. So...I cooked zucchini with garlic first and then added in the spinach(which I had already chopped-Blue Aprons directions say to cut after sautéing).

I didn't take pictures of all the meal preps, but I did do the steak one.....

I like that the extra "little" ingredients come in a bag labeled knick knacks. 

I don't know if I would have needed all these bowls to prep the ingredients, but being a first time user I decided to do exactly what they said and did on their recipe card.  

I didn't actually think one plantain would be enough....but surprisingly it was....guess the people at Blue Apron know their portions better than greedy America ;-)

The steak was tender, even my husband who was wary of the mashed plantains ate all his helping and helped himself to more!! WIN! I think next time I would use less ginger, it seemed to be a little too much compared to everything else.   

Finished seared chicken curtesy of the hubs. 

Finished Quiche
One quiche for the two of us was enough. Thus allowing us another night of quiche. It was delicious! There wasn't as much cheese as I usually put in my quiches (perhaps for the better). The recipe had me split the 3 tablespoons of shaved Parmesan cheese. Instead I added it all to the quiches. 😊

Al the meals were delicious!!

Pros: 

-takes the guess work out of dinner 

- very well portioned out 

- well packaged-great ice packs 

- ability to skip weeks
- you can sign up for wine deliveries 6 bottles for and est. $66/month, or $11/bottle
- after several orders you get free meal codes for friends
- everything was fresh.....I didn't even make all the meals that week
- You can pretty much recycle everything they send you (at first I was a little overwhelmed by all the packaging) and....if you don't have recycling abilities you can send it back to Blue Apron by printing out a free shipping label- that's pretty Awesome!!! 

Cons:

- more expensive than I typically spend on one meal for the family comes to $60/month or they say $9.99/serving

- more prep than expected
- no leftovers (for lunches, or another dinner)

If you are interested in trying....check out Blue Apron