Hello Fresh

Everyone on Facebook is always talking about Blue Apron. It's a meal delivery service. Or a grocery delivery. Well, they send you recipes and all of the ingredients in a box and then you cook the meals yourself. My soccer buddy, Lauren, uses it. (I've been invited over for "I need to cook three Blue Apron meals before everything goes bad" dinner parties on a couple of occasions!) Another friend, Paul, told me that his girls have learned to cook using the boxes.

After nearly a year of cooking the same things, I thought maybe Blue Apron, or something like it could help teach me (and the kids) a few things. At the very least it would add some variety to our dinners.

Several friends were giving away free codes and such on Facebook, but when I looked at the meal options for Blue Apron, it didn't really get me excited. Thanks to the magic of the Facebook algorithm, I started getting other ads for similar services. Enter Hello Fresh. Their recipe options all looked yummy, so I decided to sign up for three meals a week designed to feed two people. (I figured the 4 person option was too much, but if the recipes were a hit, I might bump it up later.)

The box was due to arrive Wednesday, but because of the holiday (Memorial Day), it came Thursday. It was heavy as shit! Haha. (There were several bricks of ice in it keeping everything fresh.)

I had invited my mom to dinner, so we decided to go ahead and make two recipes so we'd have enough for four people. Jiro was super excited to help, which was much appreciated.

Our first recipe was flank steak with bean salad. (The directions are on the left in the pic, and the picture is of the shrimp sandwiches that we did not make.)



We followed the directions very closely, and I was so glad that Jiro knew how to mince. (Thanks, cooking camp!)



We didn't care too much about the bean salad. It was all about the flank steak. I haven't attempted to cook meat in years. Maybe decades? So, I was so pleasantly surprised to learn how easy it was to cook the steak!

This is Jiro waiting for it to stop resting so he could eat it.



He agreed to put beans on his plate for a photo, but refused to eat them.



After he and I ate, we worked on the chicken tacos with mango slaw for my mom and Satchel. (I wasn't up for coordinating two meals at once quite yet!)



Jiro was a big help again, and I was once more amazed at how easy it was to cook chicken on the stovetop.



The tacos were a total hit.




I basically had all of the ingredients to make more tacos, so I did a week later. Only I may have been slightly overconfident as I almost set off the smoke detector. Which if you live in a house is no big deal. In an apartment building, everyone gets evacuated! Thankfully the windows open and we avoided any embarrassment!

I never made the shrimp sandwiches--we just ate the shrimp! And when I redid the tacos, I left out a few ingredients the kids weren't crazy about, like onions.

I don't know if we'll do this forever, but we'll definitely do it a little longer. It's been great learning new recipes, cooking together, and gaining some much needed confidence!

If you want to try it, this code (D4XYGC) will get you $40 off your first box. Woot!