It’s once again November, and our Dad drove off to play in the mud in Nevada. A creative bug had awakened in me, and I warned Andrey that in his absence I could completely change something. He approved of that, but asked me not to undertake anything that could lower the price of our home. I promised not to, and then proceeded to spend half of the day in the garage, trying to quell my creativity a little, but on that another time. Right now I will sing the praises of Blue Apron.
This year, after everyone’s schedules were added into the calendar, we speculated on how to spend less time cooking. All the pre-fabricated and frozen dinners were tested, and their taste was so ingrained in us that even the thought of them made us sick. What do we do now? Cook? That’s funny, because no one has the smallest desire to do so. But everyone loves to eat, and everything needs to taste good too. Anyway, one fabulous day a post about Blue Apron caught my eye. It is a company that creates recipes, delivers the products and instructions to your door, and that is required of us is to follow the simple steps laid out for us. Yes, we still have to cook, but no time needs to be spent at the store finding ingredients, or coming up with what to make. We decided to test this method, and subscribed to the delivery service.
The company offers four meals a week, 3 of them with meat-fish-bird, and one vegetarian one. We can choose any two, or all four of them. Everything needed for the meal is sent, even if it’s only 1 tbsp of flour, or an egg. In the beginning, we panicked over what to do with all the packaging, but soon learned that the company accepts it back, and the delivery of it is on them. Yay! Anyway, we chose two meals and a family plan, which means it’ll feed four people, but given the sizes of the portions, it’s more than enough for the five of us. The box with the food is delivered on Thursday, and usually Andrey and I cook together Thursday and Friday. But yesterday I was forced to run around with my kids to various places, and we ended up getting home really late, stopping to get a bite to eat along the way. So cooking was postponed to today and tomorrow.
That’s why today I got out all the ingredients out around lunch time. And started to cook. For lunch we’d be having a Mexican Casserole with meat and rice. The recipe was split into several steps, and every one was accompanied by a picture. It was the easiest thing!
The instructions look like this.
I already got the leafy greens out and washed them, and the rice is cooking.
The greens that I’d started to cut
Измельченная кинза
Red onions
Garlic gone through a press
Washed beans
On a pan over medium heat add butter and onions
Adding garlic and spices, sizzle for a few minutes
After that, add chicken and fry for 4-6 minutes
Salt and pepper to taste
Add the greens, tomato sauce, beans, and half a cup of water. Cook for 5 minutes
When the rice is ready, add mexican sour cream and stir
Stir the rice and a fourth of the cheese into the meat mixture
Move into a deep pan and sprinkle with the rest of the cheese
Bake for 12-14 minutes
Let sit for a little bit, and then it’s ready to eat!
The kids and I ate a little less than half of it
In conclusion, in the past few weeks that we’ve been receiving Blue Apron, only one meal was disliked, and two were kinda meh (but in one of those it was my fault, I overcooked the fish…), and more than ten were really delicious. We will continue this experiment. Looking at the cost, it even comes out less expensive than going out to eat twice, so it’s a win-win. 🙂