Getting dinner on the table in the middle of school, work and kids’ schedules is a complicated task. It is tempting to fall back on simple, repetitive recipes that are easy to prepare and you know your family will eat.
For me that means my tried-and-true schedule: Meatless Mondays, Taco Tuesdays, Wheatless Wednesdays, Throwback Thursdays, Fish of Fridays, Spaghetti Saturdays and Sunday Chicken Dinners. Can you tell I have been stuck in a cooking rut?
On Facebook many of my friends had been sharing their experiences with a meal service called Blue Apron that delivers ingredients and recipes with detailed instructions.
I was tempted to give Blue Apron a try, but the price seemed prohibitive. Four of their family-sized meals for four people cost $139.84 a week, which works out to $34.96 a dinner. That is cheaper than what my family spends when we occasionally go out to a restaurant, but at least twice if not three times as expensive as what I normally spend on a home-cooked meal.
Still, I was intrigued. The recipes highlighted on the Blue Apron website looked unlike anything I was used to preparing at home, “Jamaican Jerk Chicken &Maduros with Stewed Collard Greens &Charred Lime,” for example, or “Ponzu-Tahini Soba Noodle Salad with Yellow Beet, Cabbage &Chard.” I decided $34.96 was an acceptable price to pay if it included an embedded cooking lesson. My culinary education could certainly warrant an upgrade, so I decided to subscribe for a couple of weeks.
Our first box arrived on a Wednesday with two complete meals sheltered in reusable Nordic ice. The environmental cost of the packaging is definitely something to consider, but all of the containers were recyclable. The first dinner I made was “Cajun Shrimp &Cheesy Grits with Collard Greens &Green Tomato Chutney.”
While I was sautéing the veggies I tried to remember the last time I had prepared collard greens and came up blank. Ditto with grits, which is a food it never occurs to me to cook. Thanks to the step-by-step instructions with pictures, it took less than 35 minutes to prepare. Everyone in my family loved it except for my daughter, who is a professional picky eater.
The next meal I made was “Spaghetti Bolognese with Brussels Sprouts &Rosemary.” I have made Spaghetti Bolognese before, so that was not very unusual, but I did learn a clever new technique. The recipe called for dismembering Brussels Sprouts leaf by leaf and then adding them into the sauce in the last few minutes, almost like you were wilting herbs. The end result was that my entire family ate Brussels sprouts without realizing it.
Since then, my family has tried several more meals. For us, the cost makes Blue Apron a special treat. But if my kids were older, I could be a devotee. Blue Apron would be a great way to teach teenagers how to cook. You could hand over the box and say “Make me dinner!”
Jennifer Bardsley lives in Edmonds. Her book “Genesis Girl” is scheduled to be released in 2016. Find her online on Instagram @the_ya_gal, Twitter @jennbardsley or at teachingmybabytoread.com.
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