Wally's Blue Apron Experience

For Christmas, Wally got a subscription to Blue Apron from one of his cousins. Blue Apron, for the few of you who might not know, is a service that delivers ingredients and recipes to your home for you to cook. I've always been interested in what one of those meal delivery services looked like so Wally brought a box over and we cooked a two meals.

The food came in this box and was inside an insulated sleeve with ice in the bottom. It was well packed and everything was appropriately cold.

These were the box contents, ingredients for three meals.

Each meal came with a recipe card with a description of the dishes on the front along with a list of ingredients.

And the back had detailed instructions for every meal preparation.

Everything was provided except salt, pepper, and olive oil for sauteing. 

First, all of the vegetables were cleaned and chopped.

Then the cooking began. The steak was cooked in the skillet.

And the potatoes were roasted in the oven.

After the steak was done, mushrooms and shallots were cooked in the same skillet. After they were browned, balsamic vinegar was added.

Then the only mishap of the day occurred. The garlic, that was browning in some ghee, burned. At that point, there were two things cooking at the same time and Wally got a little overwhelmed. However he was able to recover and cook the kale with special cheese sauce minus the burnt garlic.

Ta-Da! Dinner is served.

So what did we think? First some background. Wally is not a cook. He has some experience in the kitchen, but doesn't like to cook. He's happy with a spoon and jar of peanut butter for supper, or sometimes a simple rice and bean dish involving a rice cooker and some cans. Actually, pretty good nutrition that he is very happy with. Repetition is not a problem for him.

He cooked this meal entirely by himself. The only help I provided was to occasionally help him find a pan or spoon he needed. It took him about an 1 1/2 hours from start to finish. An experienced cook, would have been able to do it faster, but there were a lot of steps to do including a lot of chopping that would take time no matter what the experience level.

By the time he was done, Wally was totally frazzled. Getting everything cooked and ready at the same time at the end was very stressful for him. However, he was pleased with the results. The whole family tried the meal and everyone thought it was good.--very flavorful. Ward said it was the best kale he's ever had. There were a couple of grizzly pieces in the meat, but overall not bad.

After that meal was completed, Wally and I together prepared another one, Beef over Zaatar-Spiced Rice. This one was a little easier to prepare and was also very tasty. This was the preferred one between the two.

Wally decided that Blue Apron was not for him. Too much work. However, he said that it was a good service because the ingredients were of high enough quality and the instructions were detailed enough that a non-cook like him could produce a tasty meal.

This weekend we're going to try some more Blue Apron meals here. Those are coordinated with Weight Watchers and I am very curious what those will be like.

Note: As for cost, I think Blue Apron meals are expensive. They were $10 per person per meal. A good price for nice restaurant quality food but could certainly be done cheaper if you did the planning and shopping yourself. But if you like to cook, it might be a fun way to spend a date night. Or if you like to cook, but don't have the time and energy to do the planning and shopping, this might be a good thing.

This post does not contain affiliate links. It does not contain any links for special deals. Sorry.

Thankful Sunday, February 24, 2019

I am thankful for squirrels.

Squirrels annoy me sometimes. They eat the expensive food that was meant for the birds and deplete the feeders quickly.

This was not our plan when we hung our bird feeders. So for much of the time, I am not really thankful for squirrels, I am stressed by them. However, in effort to not sweat the small stuff, I'm writing a thankful post about them to help me with an attitude adjustment.

Let's see. What is another way to look at this?
--We can afford to feed the squirrels and the birds. When the squirrels eat some of the sunflower seeds, they are not breaking the bank.
--They are cute and can put on quite a show with their acrobatics.
--They provide good entertainment when our cats stalk them through the windows.
--We enjoy the challenge of trying to outsmart them.
--They have to eat, too, especially during these cold winter months.

Squirrels really aren't so bad, I guess.  So for the squirrels who helped me remember to not sweat the small stuff, I am thankful

Thankful Sunday, February 17, 2019

I am thankful for good teachers.

As we have been sorting through boxes of things from my parents house, there have been a lot of trips down memory lane. Recently I took one of those trips with my sisters as we were looking at old yearbooks trying to decide who got which one. We had fun reading signings and remembering old friends and teachers. Later this got me thinking about some of the excellent teachers I had growing up. Our school system didn't have much money and we had overcrowded classrooms in rundown facilities, but I got a good education because I had good teachers.

A few come to mind. Miss Stemple, my first grade teacher, who read to us every day after recess and kept us wanting to hear what happened next. She also had us write the Roman numerals from 1 to 500 (10-20 every day) which reinforced the sequencing of numbers besides learning Roman numerals and practicing our fine motor skills.

Then there was my third grade teacher, Mrs. Conley, who had us put on a radio broadcast every morning. No fancy equipment here. Just a bicycle light taped to a pole that looked like a stand up microphone. At home, we would scour the newspapers for stories that we would get up and report on. There was a timekeeper who watched the clock and a recorder who posted all of the articles (some handwritten). We even made up ads for the broadcast with original songs composed during recess. Everyone loved it and I still remember, "This is GC3 going on the air at 9:05."

Mr. Westfall

In 7th and 8th grade I had a wonderful science teacher, Mr. Westfall, who made science seem so simple. He explained things in matter of fact way with everyday examples. We learned about heat exchange by looking out the windows at nearby houses and examining how much snow was on the roofs. We would guess which ones had the better insulation by how much snow we saw.  Another time while learning about combustion, he told us when buying a used car, to always look at the tail pipe. If you see black, it means the engine is not working well and there is incomplete combustion going on. And the list goes on.

Mr. Dimmick

In high school, I had the same math teacher, Mr. Dimmick, all four years. When I got to college I found I was more advanced than most of my classmates in calculus who had gone to richer, bigger schools with more offerings.

These are just a few of the good teachers I had over the course of my formal schooling. And for the many things they taught me in a very skillful way, I am thankful.

Thankful Sunday, February 10, 2019

I am thankful for an afternoon of exploring.

Last week was a tough week. There's been a lot of difficult things going on for a while now that are just a part of life. Most of the time I cope well with them, but sometimes I don't. Last week was one of those weeks. Everything caught up with me and my brain was in overdrive trying to process them all. I guess that's a necessary thing then and again, but not much fun. So when the weekend came, I was ready to do something mindless with Ward.

The weather was in the low 20's F which was too cold for me to enjoy much outside, so we decided to pickup where we left off last May with our barn quilt tour. We got our map, GPS, and snacks ready and off we went.

The weather was clear and the countryside was beautiful where we were driving. Some of the area we had been through before, but some of it was brand new to us. We had easy conversation in between our stops and Ward especially loved exploring the new areas. As the sun set, we headed home where we found a pot of stew that Theo had made. A very welcome ending to a good afternoon. Just what I needed. So for an afternoon of exploring with my husband, I am thankful.

Here are barn quilts we found and the name of their quilt square design.

Churn Dash

Seven Pointed Star

Alice's Cross Stitch

Carpenter's Wheel

Dell's Prairie Girls

Log Cabin

Lone Star

Stars and Bars

Dresden Plate

Some of the quilts were on the sides of barns that were not used any more and some of them were on barns that were part of large active farms like this one.

Thankful Sunday, February 3, 2019

I am thankful for a warm house. 

Like most of the rest of the US, we have been experiencing the effects of a polar vortex with unseasonably cold temperatures. We had several days when we were lucky if we reached double digits and this, combined with a few snowfalls, resulted in slippery surfaces that did not make it a fun time to be outside.

So I was very happy to be inside where our furnace was able to keep up with the demands of the weather outside. I was also happy that we made the decision to get new windows last year to replace our uninsulated ones.

So for a warm house to escape the bitter cold, I am thankful.

It all began with a snowfall one evening. Even though it was more than expected, we still didn't get more than a few inches.

The snow cleared and after some shoveling, our driveway and street were clear, just waiting for the sun to melt the remaining layer of ice.

However, the winds started to blow and our driveway and many streets were recovered with snow and ice which did not clear for a couple of days. Not a great picture but you can see that it was cold outside (2 F) and warm inside (69 F). 

Yesterday we began our warming trend that will eventually bring us into the 50's and 60's by Tuesday. The birds came out from wherever they had been hunkering down to survive the cold and visited the feeders.