Today I made my first meal created with fresh ingredients from BlueApron.com. BlueApron is a company that sends you all the ingredients for 3 meals (for 2 people) per week. Their shtick is that each meal is only 500-700 per serving and only takes about 35 minutes to prepare. The really nice thing about the program is that food is delivered to your home every week in a cooler box so you don’t even have to be home to receive the package. Mine sat outside my apartment door all day because even though I was home, the postman didn’t bother to ring the bell; yet, the ice wasn’t even melted.
Ingredients are labeled and divided up into the exact measurements you will need for each recipe. When I first received the box, I took everything out and separated each item into a pile for its recipe. One of my shallots was damaged and unusable, but I don’t foresee that being a huge problem as there is another shallot for a second recipe so I’ll just use half for each.
I took each group of ingredients and placed them each in a different part of the fridge (one group in each of the crispers and one on the door). This way I don’t have to sort out each recipe again when I want to cook; I can just grab and go!
For dinner tonight, I had my choice between pasta with scallops, escarole salad with bacon and chicken and roast beef. I chose the pasta because I thought it would be the best for leftovers. I am not a terrible cook, but it seems I have trouble following directions. I was scrambling around the kitchen trying to multi-task and I forgot to do things like chop the onions and boil water (even though no where in the directions does it actually say to boil water). They also had me preheat the oven at the beginning of the cooking session, but I would have been better off reading through the directions to realize I should have just used my toaster oven. Using the oven for a tiny piece of bread is just silly!
For me, I found it hard to multi-task, but I think that’s because I didn’t plan ahead. I didn’t have the proper pans ready. I didn’t have bowls to hold the chopped ingredients in. Ultimately, it all came together, but it stressed me out! 🙂
In the end, the meal took me about an hour to create and tasted good. However, it was way too much work for me to do when I come home from work. Perhaps I can chop ingredients ahead of time and store in tupperware to save time. I also need to read the recipe from start to finish to make sure I am ready for all steps.
For a single person, I think BlueApron is too much food. I could have four meals out of the one recipe I made so far. Great for leftovers, but there are only so many days in the week. I think I will end up using BlueApron for an every other week supplement to my normal meals. Seems like it would be great for the 2 person household they intend it to be for – I think there might even be leftovers for them!
Happy cooking!
Aimee Knows 