Restaurant-quality dinners with Blue Apron
This post is sponsored through my partnership with Blue Apron.
When we got home from the hospital, I couldn’t wait to eat REAL food. Thankfully, the Pilot and my lovely friend Whitney brought me hot bar and snacks while I was in the hospital -99% of the hospital food was brown, and I couldn’t even tell what it was- but by the time we were discharged, I was so ready for some home-cooked meals. Here’s the thing: meal planning and prepping weren’t anywhere near the priority ladder. We were just trying to shuffle the tasks of taking care of two small humans, and at the end of the day, we’d be like, “What should we eat for dinner?” and the takeout monster would make an appearance. Don’t get me wrong; I love some takeout. But, I also like to know what’s in my food, and feel like we could often make the same meals at home for less.
Blue Apron to the rescue.
(Baked Sicilian-Style Rigatoni Sauce)
There are a lot of things I love about Blue Apron, but the #1 thing is that they make preparing whole, fresh meals at home extremely convenient. They do the meal planning and grocery shopping for you, and all you have to do is put it together. It was very manageable to cook these dinners when P was only a week old, and we were able to enjoy restaurant-quality meals here at home.
Here’s how Blue Apron works if you’re new to it:
Blue Apron meals are delivered to your doorstep, with the pre-portioned ingredients and recipes to make amazing meals at home. Because you’re sent exactly what you need, it prevents wasted food or leftover bottles of obscure ingredients.
The ingredients are sourced from quality suppliers, and can be prepared in 40 minutes or less. The more I’ve made the meals, the faster I’ve been able to put them together. The initial washing and chopping takes the longest time, and from then on, it’s pretty easy breezy.
Since they’re constantly changing their menu offerings and recipes, I find that I’ve been experimenting much more with new-to-me ingredients and cooking techniques.
The meals are available for a two person or family plan, and the servings are extremely generous. We often have enough left over for a lunch the next day.
The shipping is free -they ship to most of the US- and you can cancel at any time.
I also love that you can recycle the packaging. If you don’t have local recycling (we didn’t when we lived in Valdosta), you can simply send the packaging back to Blue Apron and they will recycle it for you. All of the details are here!
Now that we’re getting back into cooking and planning at home, I’ll be looking at their website for recipe inspiration. Here are some recipes I have my eye on for the coming weeks:
Seared chicken and roasted sweet potato rounds
Coconut curry-braised cauliflower
Fall vegetable and goat cheese quiche
And now, here’s an awesome deal for my reader friends: the first 50 to order will get TWO free meals on their first Blue Apron order! This will be perfect during the busy holiday season, especially if you want to share it as a gift with family or friends. Also, they are having a Thanksgiving Drive to provide meals to those in need. If you’re interested in joining in, click here before 11/20 to donate a beautiful feast that will feed a family of six. Last year, they donated 35,000 meals and are striving to provide 75,000 this year.
Hope you have a wonderful day <3
xo
Gina
This post is sponsored by Blue Apron. Thank you for so much for supporting this blog and the companies who help support our family.
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So pumped! This is just the excuse I needed to try Blue Apron. Will help me get my butt into gear to actually cook during the week, which often falls to the bottom of the list between work, my 3-year-old and exercise.
so awesome- i think you’ll love it! i totally hear ya. if i don’t plan in advance, we end up getting takeout
I love the idea of Blue Apron, but I tried it once, and you need to already have some cooking skills. The recipes aren’t necessarily really easy to cook. Even though I had all the ingredients in the right portions, it was kind of stressful for me because it does involve some actual cooking. It’s not quite as simple as it sounds, but that might be because I don’t cook very well on my own and just having the right ingredients wasn’t quite enough to put me over the edge into comfort zone.
that’s a great point. it definitely takes a while to get into a groove with cooking. when i first got started, a 20-minute rachael ray recipe would take me over an hour
LOL! That’s what I’m talking about! Take the estimated time and double it or triple it for me. 🙂 Congrats on P. You appear to be a very loving mom. Your girls are blessed.
I’m pretty experienced with cooking – not an expert, but know my way around the kitchen – and I’ve still had a few blue apron mishaps!
I think sometimes they pack too many instructions into the little boxes – so sometimes, we would use all of a seasoning packet instead of half, or something silly like that. Mostly because with an entire paragraph of tiny print, it can be hard to parse out each item on the list.
Oh that picture of Liv is just too cute!
i love it, too 🙂
I loooove Blue Apron! I did a partnership with them on my blog, and we adored the recipes! The step-by-step directions are so clear since each direction has an illustration. One of our recipes was curried chicken thighs with snap peas and fingerling potatoes… I know the name off the top of my head because we still make it about once a week! Delicious!
I tried Blue Apron for the first time last week. My sister gets it and shared a week with me. I really enjoyed it. I love to cook but don’t normally follow a recipe so that took some getting use to. We have one more meal to make, but the first two were very good. We made a wonderful tortilla soup that I would for sure make again. I also like being introduced to new ingredients. One meal had us roast acorn squash with rasse el hanout-it’s a spice found in North African cuisine. I’ve already bought the spice and made the squash again! I highly recommend!
I love Blue Apron but sadly my daughter who lives with me is a picky eater, and I can’t justify the cost if it’s mostly me eating the food. But it does take care of three meals for the week which I love!
That salmon looks very good. Still haven’t tried Blue Apron since I do my own cooking and meal planning.
We love blue apron! We thought it couldn’t get any better- then we signed up for their wine subscription! : D
Thank you so much! I’ve been wanting to try Blue Apron for a while now, so glad you provided me with the opportunity! 🙂
Thanks for the post! I’ve been wanting to try Blue Apron to help me up my cooking game. The step by step directions sounds perfect for a beginner like me.
How have you been finding the amount of packaging waste left behind? A friend of mine tried a similar program to Blue Apron (I live in Australia) and said that the pre-packaging was wayyyyyy excessive.
i think they’ve streamlined it quite a bit, and you can recycle it