Cooking (in my NEW KITCHEN!) with Blue Apron

I first heard about Blue Apron when we lived in the city and some our friends would use the service. One of my good friends would always order a Blue Apron box when she was having house guests or if she knew it was going to be a particularly busy week at work.

We are getting the house ready for that magazine shoot, so my mom offered to take my girls up to her house in the mountains for the week so we could focus on projects. It felt like perfect timing when Blue Apron reached out to see if I would like to try a box for myself this week - the last thing I have time for right now is grocery shopping! So last weekend I got my refrigerated box full of the exact proportions of ingredients I needed to make three meals for Michael and I (though you can order the box for either two, four or six servings).

Meals are $9.99 per person - and they are DELICIOUS. These recipes are for sure keepers.

We made the Fresh Beet Pasta and it was so, so, so good! I pretty much love anything with beets, but the lemony tang and the fresh goat cheese and walnuts seriously put this recipe over the edge for me. Blue Apron uses only the freshest ingredients and they try to source local and artisan goods where possible. They were gorgeous.

I love that there's no commitments with Blue Apron. I can skip or cancel my delivery at any time for the weeks I have a little more bandwidth. But sometimes, like this week, where I feel like my brain might explode if I have to make a single more decision, it's nice to have a menu plan and all the ingredients sitting in front of me on my counter top at 5 pm.

The meals are so easy to prepare, especially with the well-designed recipe sheets. All of them take less than 40 minutes to make, though it will look like you slaved away for hours! Michael is always a good sport, but he definitely has an opinion about food (so it's a good thing he's always willing to cook), but this dish was a total home run with him. I'm excited to make it again when the girls get home! Claire loves anything with goat cheese. :)

Also, I was surprised at how generous the serving sizes were! We ended up sharing with friends who stopped over. It was fun to be like, "What? Oh, this? Yeah, I just threw it together. Just a regular old Wednesday night meal..." (as I'm quickly shoving the Blue Apron recipe sheets into a drawer) ;)

Have you tried Blue Apron? I am so excited to use it again and try some new recipes. They ship nearly everywhere in the US (there's a full map here).

And good news! Blue Apron is giving the first 250 readers two free meals with their first order! Here's where you can sign up. Happy cooking!