Why I love Blue Apron!

About a year ago, I felt like I was in a cooking rut.   I do love to cook, but due to our busy schedules we were eating the same meals over and over again.  When we became tired of that, we would order out, which is terrible for our waistlines!  I was looking for recipes that helped me with portion control, and did not take up too much space in our increasingly crowded refrigerator.   That is when I decided to redeem a coupon for Blue Apron.

Blue Apron is a delivery service that sends you ingredients 3 meals for 2 or 4 people for you to prepare.  For the 2 person plan, you can choose 3 meals out of 6 offered.   There are always 3 vegetarian options, the meat options generally have a beef, chicken/pork, and a fish option.  You can indeed mix and match the selections, but some combinations are not always available.  It costs $9.99 a person per meal, which I thought was reasonable for a healthy meal.  Sure, could I go to Five Guys for less, but I would be eating much more than 700 calories per meal!  

When you first open the box, the recipe cards are on top so you don't lose them!

Also worth noting, the portions tend to be generous.  We have never left a meal hungry!  Some times that is due to the meals being for 3 portions instead of the standard 2.    This is perfect for cooking for two, and some of my single friends use the leftovers for a lunch the next day.   It is also a great date idea, Mr. DC Gal and I love cooking together!

My first step is to separate the ingredients by recipe into bags.  T
hat way I can just grab the right bag and start cooking right away!

One of my favorite aspects of Blue Apron is the meal variety, we always get to try something new.  I had never cooked with Bok Choy before getting Blue Apron meals, so it's nice to add variety to our dinners.   Mr. DC Gal's biggest complaint is the chopping.  I love food prep, it helps me relax after a long day!  For those who don't, a nice food processor can probably do the trick and cut down on a lot of your prep time.

The best thing about Blue Apron for me is that it teaches me cooking techniques.  They include recipe cards for each meal, and more recently they have included cards that talk about a highlighted food or ingredient.

Many of our favorite meals originated as Blue Apron meals.  Our absolute favorite is a Chicken Pasta meal, and while Mr. DC Gal loves pasta I wasn't sure how well this would be received.  We now even make a double batch, and I personally look forward to the leftovers.   Not only is it delicious, it does not require many ingredients and they are all readily available!  This is a great summer meal, especially once Roma Tomatoes are in season!   We do it it year round now.    The recipe link is above, I substitute regular fettuccini noodles for the basil version, I just increase the amount of basil in the recipe!  I always add garlic....you can never have enough garlic.  This brings up a great point about Blue Apron, if you know you like spicy food, and I mean really spicy food, you will never think they include enough spice to increase the heat for you.  Be prepared to add crushed red pepper, or whatever your spice of choice is to get the meal to where you like it.  

All that is missing is Basil...massive amounts of basil!

If you are thinking of trying out Blue Apron, do!   You probably have a friend who has free meals, I always have a ton that go unclaimed!  It takes the thought out of meal planning during busy weeks, and you may find a meal (or two, or three!) that become family staples too.

Happy eating!

 

The Last Minute Pasta Shells Experiment

The other night Mr. Dcgal and I were planning on grilling.  We had our meat, sides, and everything ready for a delicious meal.  We came home from work to a torrential downpour!  Some times I think the worst thing in the world is spending the day dreaming about food that in the end you can't have!  

Now we need a new meal.   I learned early on that Italian food is the easiest path to a happy Mr. Dcgal, and I had a box of shells left in the pantry.  Most of the other ingredients I had, as we have pasta so much around here, it always pays to have extra everything!  We did swing by the store to get some garlic bread.  Now, I used those shells previously to try Ree Drummond's recipe.  Now, while it was great, it was a lot of cheese.  A LOT.  The sauce came out really well, so I wanted to do a version of this with maybe a little meat and spinach.

I followed her recipe closely, however I made the sauce with sausage and cooked ground beef separately for the shells.  I also sautéed spinach for the shells also.

For the filling, I weighed the cheese and made the filling as the recipe described.

 I cooked the shells, slightly undercooked since they would be baked.   I thought the best order for stuffing the shells would be ground beef first, then spinach, and then the cheese to seal it all.

Then I put a little of the sauce down and started laying down the shells.

How do I rotate pictures on this thing?

Much better!

Because I added the meat and the spinach, this recipe made two trays of shells!  They will get eaten in this house though!  I placed both trays in the oven, and put the bread on the bottom rack.

It smells so good!  It's making me hungry.

Done!

So this was a pretty quick and easy experiment!  I was finished in about 45 minutes, including baking time which I mostly used to clean up and prep for plating.    Not bad for an emergency meal!

Lessons learned:  I inexplicably cooked the ground beef  with garlic and Italian seasoning...and that is it. In the future, I will probably add tomato paste, so that it has a little more flavor.  It came out a bit bland in comparison to every thing else.  So delicious though!

I'm back!

Or at least I will be soon!  A lot has happened since my last post, most importantly getting married and buying a home!  I'm finally able to grow and experiment more in the house which has been interesting!   I have even started canning!   I plan on having more posts on my canning, and I plan attempting freezer meals this winter.

Think of all the wonderful things we can do in this kitchen!

Lip Balm

So on to a project that was successful!  So one of the many things that I thought was a cute idea came from the Martha Stewart Website to make your own lip balm.  Her product list includes beeswax.  Now that I'm incredibly lazy I had been solely using Amazon.com for all of my purchases, to take advantage of Amazon Prime, which I love an wholeheartedly endorse.  So I started to get nervous with the idea of picking out beeswax and the quality of it until I came along a comment on the Martha site that recommended this website for getting supplies.  So this is what I ended up using:

Supplies

Lip Balm base (I used the  Macadamia and Jojoba Lip Balm Base and the Soy Lip Balm Base w/SPF 15)
Lip Balm Tint (I bought blue and rose)
Lip Balm Flavor (Cherry and Blueberry)
Containers (Oval and small tins)
Plastic Pipettes
Kitchen Scale
Candy Thermometer

Things I wish I had:
My Mettler Toledo scale from the lab

So this project was easier than I expected.   I measured out 60g of base and melted it in a glass container in the microwave.  I started on high and then later moved to 50% power since it heated up so quickly.  I read that you needed .03% of tint and that you couldn't add that if the base was more than 120 degrees Fahrenheit.  So I used my candy thermometer (that I have yet to use) to take the temperature of the base (much higher than 120 degrees!)  let it cool, then I hit tare on the scale and attempted to add the base.  My scale, while displaying the correct number of significant figures, could not register the tint amount.   So I used what I thought was appropriate for the tint, it was a little more risky with the flavors but I figured if I got it wrong, oh well.

While filling the containers (sorry no pictures of the conventional lip balm tubes) I noticed that I needed to zap the glass dish in the microwave for about 30 seconds max to heat the mixture prior to filling the containers.  When I didn't do this the mixture cooled too quickly and the pipette clogged.   When I used the tubes, I used a rubber band to bind the tubes upright which made it easy to fill.  As long as the mixture was hot, the mixture would cool so you would get the nice looking meniscus that you see in lip balm tubes normally.  

 So this project turned out really well.  It was a last minute (I have 30 minutes, will this work?) project, and wow, was this easy. My big changes would be to use different tins, since the metal ones were a bit tough.  Also labels!!!  I bought waterproof labels that I (of course) lost before making the containers.  I had planed some super cute holiday labels that I never added.  I think that these would be great for bridal/baby showers, etc.  I will post again if I add labels, because I feel like it will be a bit interesting with coming up with sizes.  I also found a really interesting website which may be my source in the future.

Christmas Cookies and Holiday Post-Mortem

Ok, it has been quite awhile since I posted.  Part of that was my enthusiasm for this new craft phase of mine.  I planned TONS of new projects and I executed only a few of them.  So my lessons learned from this holiday period:

1) Start early.  REALLY early.  I'm thinking I'm going to have to plan many of my holiday projects around Halloween and start no later than Thanksgiving weekend.  I got many things done, however I definitely felt rushed at the end and didn't put the effort into packaging that I had planned.

2) Budget!  I think I blew my entire Christmas budget and didn't buy a single gift.  Oops.  It was all for a good cause!

So here is a project that didn't go off as planned:

Recipes: Heather Chittum's Sugar Cookies via The Washington Post
                 Royal Icing Recipe via Sweetopia

So the plan was to bake ice and wrap sugar cookies for gifts this holiday season.  I had these wonderful visions of creating different colors of icing and getting comfortable with using a pastry bag.  Well, that almost happened.

The cookies:

I followed the recipe exactly.  I sifted the flour with the other dry ingredients (minus the sugar).  It was a little weird not letting the butter go to room temperature, but I guess made sense.  Next time I may let the butter soften since it's so much easier to use that way and it's going in the fridge anyway.  

Finished product!

After

Before

 So something I noted, I put the dough in the fridge/freezer constantly.  Sometimes while I was cutting the shapes I had to chill the dough.  I would definitely be more conscious in the future of that.

Done!

The Icing:

The next step was the icing which I did the next day.   I purchased a Wilton tool caddy that seemed to be a good starting place for using a pastry bag and piping tools.   So I followed the icing directions, no pictures because I do think the icing issues I had was a matter of viscosity.   According to the detailed directions on Sweetopia's site, there seem to be two types of people in the world.  People who like to outline their cookies and flood them with icing with the same viscosity and people who like a thicker icing for the cookies.  I realized that I am in the latter category.   Also, the directions said to use a #2 or #3 tip.  I started with a #2 tip, but when I used the runny icing, the icing was so thin that I realized I needed a thicker tip for the outline to compensate.  In the end decorating the cookies was a complete mess (see above) because I had no handle on the viscosity issues.  So a future post will be fully dedicated to icing cookies.  I plan on practicing for all minor holidays so I can be ready for next year around the holidays.  Also, I couldn't find a photo, but not only did the icing did start to bleed but my kitchen and my hands were pink from the food coloring.  My next attempt will involve rubber gloves!

Wine Bottle Decoration

Idea from:  A. Party Style via Pinterest
"Cooking" Wine:  Bordeaux 2009

Items needed:
Ribbon (your choice)
Wire (I used 26 gauge silver)
Jingle Bells (I used 1 3/4" and the rest are 1/2" bells)
Wine (that you aren't drinking)
Wire cutters (though scissors could work with a high gauge)
This wire tool thingy (I'm sure someone can tell me what's it's called, but to me it's a thingy)

Things I wish I had and will probably will buy later:  Glue gun

So I have way too many jingle bells around the house.  The reason will probably be the subject of a future post.   So I was on pinterest doing a jingle bell search to see what in the &$#! I could possibly do with all of these bells.  DCguy and I were invited to a holiday party this weekend, and one of the ideas I liked on pinterest was from A. Party Style for a wine bottle decoration.  I figured it would be a good use of the extra bells and wire.  

Let the games begin!

Ok, so this blog is not about me trying out my deceitful side!  I have a scientific/technical job that has gotten a bit stressful as of late (and will be that way for awhile) so I have turned to cooking, baking, and crafts as a stress reliever.  Oh and wine, I drink a lot of wine!  I have never been good at art, even my stick figures leave something to be desired, so I hope no one expects Martha Stewart here!   What I will do is post pictures of "experiments" in the culinary arts and craft projects.  I am getting my ideas from the internet, so when I do each project, I will post the website so you can see where I found everything.  I hope this will be interesting to someone other than me, but maybe not.  I also hope to have some guest bloggers to show me what they are up to, but it may take some convincing!