THE CAVENDER DIARY

I’m a very good cook,

Jamie, not so much.

S0 I was a little surprised when he suggested that we try one of those meal delivery services. You know, the kind where they send you all the ingredients and directions to make a couple of home-cooked meals.

We chose Blue Apron.

(Hello Fresh was an option too….but I couldn’t get past the badly dubbed commercials.)

Here’s how our Blue Apron meals arrived on the doorstep.

Each cold-packed box, delivered every Monday, contains everything you’ll need for 3 full meals. (Except for olive oil and salt/pepper which every recipe called for)

We started with Sweet Chili Chicken with Tinkerbell Peppers, Green Beans & Coconut Rice.

Lots of chopping. Seriously, LOTS of chopping. But I have to say that I would never have tried Tinkerbell peppers before this…..and they were both beautiful and yummy. The rice was good too, but there wasn’t much of it, maybe 1 cup cooked. I would have liked more. Overall there wasn’t a whole lot of flavor in the chicken, but we liked it.

Our next recipe was Brown Butter Gnocchi with Summer Squash, Almonds & Soft-Boiled Eggs.

We eat packaged gnocchi occasionally. I usually have a bag in the pantry for quick meals. Summer squash is one of my favorite veggies and the almonds were a nice addition. Jamie isn’t big on soft-boiled eggs…but I thought it mixed very nicely with the rest of the dish.

It was good…..but not great.

Our third meal was Empanadas de Picadillo with Tomato-Cucumber Salad & Lime Creme Fraiche.

The tomato was very unripe and the cucumber was a little over-ripe right out of the box. The empanadas didn’t have nearly as much flavor as I would have expected them too. Maybe they need more salt. But we think we may try making these again, only with a more flavorful filling.

Overall, we got to try a few meals that we wouldn’t have on our own. And we both got a few ideas for future meals for us to make. And maybe some new skills.

It was fun cooking together, and I could see where anyone could learn some basic cooking techniques because the directions are pretty simple. There are pictures of the steps after all.

We had a broken egg and some veggies that weren’t quite as ripe as I would have chosen.

You don’t get huge portions, no left-overs anyway, but there was just enough food to feed two big guys like us.

So give Blue Apron a try.

I know that we’ll keep going.

We’ve got chicken burgers, roasted pork and zucchini quiche coming next time…..

I’ll keep y’all posted.