A (new to me) tool

Are you familiar with Pepperplate? It's an online recipe tool that lets you import recipes from a whole slew of sites or you can copy & paste your own recipes if you've got them either in soft copy or on a blog (like I do).

Then it will generate a shopping list, based on the recipes you select. You can arrange the shopping list so it matches the order in which you shop.

We just started using it and wow, I'm liking it so far. Although I can't import my recipes from my private recipe site, I was able to copy and paste them. It could not be easier.

I think this will replace Blue Apron for us. We liked the food and we liked trying new recipes, but it was sometimes awkward timing to get three meals' worth of food when really we had time to cook eggs. Pepperplate looks like it will give us some of the convenience we're looking for, without so much overhead.

If you try it, let me know what you think.

The rest of the Blue Apron meals

Spiced meatballs

I thought I'd go ahead and finish up my review for all three meals we've now cooked and eaten through Blue Apron. On Monday I wrote about the salmon, which was truly yummy and my favorite of the meals so far.

Tuesday night, we had the spiced meatballs with summer squash salad you see in this photo. It, too, was quite good although probably my third favorite of the three meals. It's in third place not because of any deficit of the meal or recipe but because the other two were so good.

Last night we had the chicken stir fry which Kent had cooked ahead on Sunday. We figured of the three dishes, it would probably store the best for a couple of days and we were right. The rice is cooked in water plus a little reconstituted coconut milk and that added a touch of sweetness and creaminess to the meal. It's a slightly spicy dish, and I think if we were to make it again I might want to dial the spice up just a little bit, although honestly it was yummy as made.

We've skipped delivery this week (remember, we weren't sure if we wanted any more meals) but the following week, we'll be trying these:

• Tomato-basil burgers with green bean/tomato salad
• Taiwanese Three Cup Chicken with Rice
• Whole Grain Spaghetti with Corn, Cherry Tomatoes and Mascarpone Cheese

I'll let you know what we think.

Blue Apron—a review

Warning—lots of photos ahead

Have you heard of Blue Apron? You can read about it here, but basically it’s a subscription food service that delivers the ingredients for three meals ready to be cooked. My friend Magpie was given a week’s worth of service from Blue Apron but she forgot to cancel so ended up having it for a second (maybe third) week. So Blue Apron gave her a week of free meals to give to a friend; when she asked around, I raised my hand.

The recipes this week

Kent and I have talked about the rut we tend to get in when planning meals. Neither of us have much energy during the week to cook involved dishes, even though we both like to cook a lot. So we will cook several meals on Sunday and then fill in with quick hits like omelets (which I learned to make like a champ from my grandmother) or something similarly quick. They're tasty meals and fill us up just fine but after a while, we’re bored. When we’re bored is when we order carry out sushi or just flat go out and that’s not necessarily good for either our budget or our bulges.

So the idea of Blue Apron interested us both. Our delivery came Friday and Kent’s cooked up two of the meals today—we just finished one and the other one is in the fridge for later this week. We still have a third meal to fix, spiced meatballs with garlic toast and summer squash salad.

All the food

First thing: You get everything you need to make the three dishes, and the food is fresh. The produce looked amazing as did the salmon and chicken. The Thai basil was wonderful, and the paper bags have tiny plastic bottles with screw top lids that hold the red wine vinegar and ponzu sauce.  Our three meals are:

• Spiced meatballs
• Stir-fried ginger basil chicken
• Seared salmon and panzanella

The food comes slightly prepped. For example, the salmon had been skinned and the chicken for the second dish was diced, and everything was already measured. You still need to chop, cut, etc. but that's only to be expected. Kent—who is quite handy in the kitchen—thought that some of the prep time given might be a little optimistic. The chicken dish prep time was listed as 15 minutes but took more like 20. We'll see how the meatball dish goes.

Plated!

Tonight we had the salmon and I would change only one part of it. The salad portion has croutons in with the tomatoes and corn but to my mind it wasn't needed. In fact, Kent only made half the croutons which still seemed like a lot, and we ate the rest of the bread (which had been baked with olive oil and then rubbed with a clove of garlic) as a side dish.

We got to try some things we haven't been able to get here before, like the Thai basil. The peppers in the salmon dish were shishito peppers, which neither of us have heard of and they were perfect for the dish. Also heirloom cucumbers, which we've wanted to try but can't get here.

More photos:

Chicken stir fry

Salmon dish ingredients

Salmon dish salad

Net/net, we like this well enough to try a few more weeks. Thanks, Magpie!