our first blue apron box!

hi guys! we just finished our first blue apron box and it was pretty good! it was on groupon at some point (might still be) and we decided to give it a try to compare it to hello fresh, which we really enjoyed. so, onto the food! ~Lin-chan ^.~

for those interested, i added the meals we received into my recipes folder.
links to previous hello fresh posts (first, second)

sorry that i didn't get photos of the box..i was out of town and teh hubz had to condense to put this in the fridge. basically the box has a huge lined bag with two giant ice packs and a piece of cardboard to separate the meat from the other ingredients.

dinner 1: shrimp & pineapple fried rice
preparation: i made this. some of the steps were kind of annoying because it says to take a peeler to the lime...when realistically you want to zest the lime. please say that first and not two sentences later! so i peeled it with a peeler, then had to cut it into smaller strips because i didn't use my zester. >.> otherwise, no complaints outside of the ones mentioned in the overall thoughts section below.
thoughts: first, the fried rice called for 2 tsp of lime zest, it was very zesty! i wish that i didn't cook the rice for as long or with as much water..or something, it was wetter and stickier than i like. otherwise, i enjoyed it.

dinner 2: italian beef grinders
preparation: teh paul made this. see overall thoughts below.
thoughts: i'm not sure if i wasn't a huge fan of the bread because it was refrigerated (a bit stiff)..or that it was so huge that it was difficult to take a bite. not to mention that you basically have to split the bun in half in order to stuff it..... i thought this one was ok. i liked the steak fries, but teh paul didn't put enough salt on them. the cheese sauce stuff was interesting. i kind of wish it were more liquidy and melty than a semi-solid blob. the meat was seasoned only by the mushrooms and onions that were cooked in the pan before and with it, so it was very boring and plain-beefy. it was ok.

dinner 3: chicken & sage biscuit pot pie
preparation: teh paul made this. see overall thoughts below.
thoughts: this was more or less like a chicken and dumplings..except it was biscuits and you put them on top instead of the bottom...... the "filling" was actually really good. think deconstructed chicken pot-pie. yumz. this is the only one of the three we are considering making again, if we can figure out how to make the chicken demi glace ourselves, and locate some creme fraiche.


overall thoughts:
we enjoyed all of the meals, but there were things that will need some tweaking if we make them again. one of the issues we had with the recipes in this box was that you had to do multiple things, while others are cooking...but by the way we're not listing this on the step you're on. it's on the next one. i didn't have as much of a problem with this...because you're kind of supposed to read ahead anyway, but teh paul was getting kind of annoyed when he made some of the meals.
cancellation: we did attempt to cancel this before they charged us for the second box, but since i didn't create the blue apron account, i wasn't familiar with how it worked and assumed teh paul suspended the next week's box....he didn't and i hit the cancel button before he told me that we could postpone it........... so a second box arrived yesterday and i will post about its contents next week.

comparison to hello fresh:

1. the ingredients were kind of tossed into this bag and not sorted by recipe (aside from the "knick knack" baggies). the hello fresh had everything for each meal but the meats neatly arranged into their own boxes.
2. the quantity of food/leftovers was a lot more with blue apron. we ate maybe 1/2 of the pot pie that night, and i was full about 2/3 of the way through both the fried rice and beef grinder.
3. blue apron is a bit cheaper at $60 for the 3 meals for 2 (at regular price), and hello fresh is regularly $69.
4. aside from skipping weeks, you can't choose what meals you will receive from blue apron. hello fresh lets you pick 3 from 5 choices (with the omnivore box).
5. the recipe cards are kinda dinky. with blue apron, they give you..basically glossy card stock. and because i have a messy husband and occasionally sticky counters....these cards either got stuff on them or they stuck to the counter and were miserable to peel off afterward. and they didn't keep very well, they kind of warp (if wet, like normal paper) or bits of paper got stuck to my counter where it was sticky......... >.>
1. hello fresh had all of recipes printed onto a nice, heavier paper and then 'bound' (glued) together, like a booklet.
2. reprinting nice looking recipe cards from blue apron was a no-go, as you can see in my recipes folder, linked above. hello fresh let you download an exact copy of the recipe cards in pdf form.