our second HelloFresh box

hi guys!!! we finally got our second hellofresh box! we ended up skipping the last two weeks because we went out of town, and last week's choices didn't sound all that interesting or special. anyway, this time we chose:

1. Pan-Seared Steak with Cipollini Onions, Roasted New Potatoes, and Tomato Pan-Sauce
2. Chicken & Butter Bean Cassoulet with Crispy Parmesan Breadcrumbs
3. Sole en Papillote with Mushrooms, Croutons, and Brown-Butter Caper Sauce

for recipes of these three dishes, see my HelloFresh recipes folder on my google drive.

dinner 1: seared steak

this was really good. i'm not sure we're going to make this sauce again because it was super soupy as you can see here. there was no thickener in it. it was just water, vegetable stock, tomatoes, and garlic.

dinner 2: chicken cassoulet
this was a lot better than expected. i'm not a huge kale fan because of the texture, but in this casserole, it's not too bad. this was the only of the 6 dinners we've tried that we actually had leftovers; we ate 3/4 of an 8x8 pan. and we will with certainty make this again!
sidenote, i wonder how this would be with fresh butterbeans? that's one of my favorite things when i went to my great grandmother's house growing up. she had butterbean vines all along her fence, and i would go pick them, rinse them, and eat them raw. so good!
-- to anyone interested in making this in the future, the "2" stock concentrates is equivalent to 16oz of stock, and the can of butter beans is about 15.5oz

dinner 3: sole

there's a few things about this recipe. first off, it tasted amazing. and secondly, paul there were a few aspects of the cooking process that we didn't totally agree with.

1. making your own croutons from fresh bread....in a saute pan...not baking them in the oven. granted, he didn't make them crispy/crunchy. so the edges were slightly crisp but still spongy on the inside, which made them super awesome.
2. the recipe calls for one slice of lemon per fish fillet. uh, no. that is too big of a fillet for one, thank you.
3. cooking the fish directly in aluminum foil...instead, we put the green beans, mushrooms, and fish onto some parchment, then wrapped it in foil
4. expectations vs. reality. the photo on the recipe card looks closer to the plate on the right..sans some of the croutons. and reality, the plate on the left, which is a first attempt to pull the fish out of the parchment and becoming a jumbled mess.

thoughts: using this groupon was amazing while it lasted. at the moment we haven't canceled our subscription, but i have paused it for the next two weeks while we decide what we want to do. cost-wise, we really do want to cancel, but at the same time, it's really convenient. haha. another concern with this subscription though is that, i will eventually be working on client projects at their respective offices in faraway cities, so it might become complicated to keep up the subscription anyway.