SJMitch

This week fewer of the meals seemed interesting to me. I skipped both Blue Apron and Purple Carrot since each had only one recipe I wanted. But even Sun Basket and Gobble were light on meals that called to me. For Gobble, I got 3 meals but doubled up on one, so only 2 different ones. For Sun Basket, there were really only 2 I wanted but I decided to get 3 -- going for this one: Roasted chicken breast and cauliflower with green romesco I think I mentioned I don't like chicken breast much compared to thigh. Not as much flavor the texture doesn't appeal. I should have probably done the chicken sous vide. Maybe next time. I do like chicken skin, but here are the breast we got: Well, at least one has usable amounts of skin. At last they arrived icy and seem quite fresh. I picked the dish because we love cauliflower and Sun Basket makes an awesome green romesco from cilantro, chile, pumpkin seeds, garlic, sherry vinegar and olive oil. Because the sauce comes pre-made this is a low effort dish.

Not missing anything. We eat some as "lunch" and some as "dinner". They are not specially marked for any meal (except the Sunbasket breakfast two-fers). We usually eat two sit-down meals a day. A "lunch" or "brunch" (11am-ish, within 1.5-3 hours of waking) and a later meal (anywhere from 5pm to 9pm depending on our schedules -- I work evenings somedays). We fill in with snacks and leftovers as we get hungry and some fruit at night. So, we have about 14 meals a week we can fill with a mealkit meal if we want.

So, 9 meals is usually the most we get from the mealkit companies. This is our week of meals: Our favorites were: zucchini fritters from Sun Basket, the Soy Chicken from Blue Apron, and the Stuffed Avocado from Purple Carrot (which I thought wouldn't be interesting but which I liked even better than the quesadilla thing). I think we eat pretty darn good! Given our food preferences, there really aren't any restaurants that offer this caliber of food with this many diverse veggies anywhere near this price. About the closest is some of the mediterranean places, but our typical meal at falafel bite: chicken kebab, low carb option (which we choose because you get more veggies (bigger salad and added veggie kebab) and less starch (no pita)) costs us $37 plus tax for two of us. Some of the upscale restaurants (say Parcel 104 in Santa Clara CA) do veggies even better than this, but, of course they are really pricey. So, no, take out can't even do this for us. Oh wait, except for the Whole Foods pre-prepared buffet. But there you are limited to steam table type foods (which can be decent, but is limiting: no stuffed avocado, crispy tortilla pie type dishes, etc) and which generally runs us about as much as these meals. Yeah, you can get plain rice with fish and some anemic veggies at a diner, but not nicely spiced like the rices here (bamboo rice!) and the slaw would be boring white cabbage and mayo.

Lunch it is: Spicy vegetable tostadas And now Blue Apron makes a mistake with the box: we only got 3 tortillas instead of 4. So the prior week 1 out of 2 boxes had errors, this last week: 2 out of 3. Much higher error rate than normal; I'd say that usually about 1 out of 8 boxes have problems. All gave me credits. I do have to be careful though -- one time I was ready to email a company about a missing ingredient (a spice), but found the little packet stuck to the side of a plastic bag when I took out recycling. Now I check very well! This was a disappointing veggie dish after being used to what Sun Basket and Purple Carrot do for vegetarian. Rice and veggies on a tostada. Er. OK: After enjoying the sriracha flavored sauce from Purple Carrot, I spiced up Blue Apron's mayo with a Tabanero sauce we like: This dish needed something more. Pepitas, say. On to the next week: 6 dishes from Sun Basket and Gobble. Only 5 different dishes since we doubled up on one from Gobble. Purple Carrot didn't interest me enough, except for this carrot fritter recipe. I might make it myself. I wish they'd let you mix and match from their regular and TB12 menu. And they really make it a hassle to change back and forth from one to the other since it changes all future deliveries: you can't pre-set multiple weeks in advance.

Well I thought we were eating later, but husband saw the food and said he's hungry now. So, we ate. This was way better than I expected! The flavors worked really well together. Lots of extra pickled veggies -- but we ate all those, too! Might make the last dish late this evening or it'll be lunch tomorrow.

Down to our last two dishes this week, both vegetarian. I've prepped the ingredients for the Banh Mi Stuffed Avocados that liamsaunt was much more inventive with. We'll be making it standard later when we get hungry. It shipped with two packets of sugar but they were wrapped up with the fresh ingredients and the moisture got into them. Still useable, just annoying. Here's the partial prep: That's Black beans with tamari and scallions Quick pickled carrot, daikon, and jalapeno Vegan srirachi aioli Bamboo rice Fresh mint and cilantro Some small pieces of scallion, mint, and cilantro for the top Nori spice mix Avocado We have a mango we need to use and some leftover pre-chopped red onion in the fridge. Thinking of adding them to the beans.

Sunbasket dinner: Salmon and zucchini in parchment with mediterranean farro salad I thought this was a repeat it for us, but looks like we previously had sole in parchment with a different salad. Came out perfect, better than the sole I remember. This is even a bigger portion than this looks, our white bowls are huge! Small mistake by Sun Basket: the lemon was missing. Luckily I had one (small and starting to dehydrate, but I had one!) I did not change a thing or add anything. (well, OK, I did my standard grain-thing: throw the grain in the rice cooker with half stock, half water way in advance so it is ready for me when I start cooking). Salad has spinach, radish, cucumber, scallions, mint, farro and feta. They gave you parchment to make the packets: I've served these in the packets to be opened when we eat, but prefer not now that we've had parchment fish several times. Very reliable dish variation from Sun Basket.

Oh yeah. Loved the tofu soup in a cup for breakfast in Shanghai:

Yes! Blue Apron hit it out of the park with this dish! Soy and 5-spice chicken thigh with sesame-jalapeno rice and squash-cucumber salad Supposedly based on a Samin Nosrat recipe. I made very minor changes to the instructions: I used half stock in the rice cooking liquid, charred the jalapeños before adding to the rice, and toasted up some sesame seeds for extra topping (I love sesame -- I thought I'd have to add extra sesame oil to the rice, but they gave plenty!). And it made so much squash salad I couldn't fit it all in the bowl! Extra for tomorrow. After the under-spiced cod and hash dish it was a delight to get this one bursting with flavor! I liked the tip to tear the mint leaves in the garnish right before serving -- adds extra aroma as you sit down to eat. A great quote from a commenter on the Blue Apron website on this dish: "This is a delicious recipe, the kind of recipe I joined blue apron for. After a few weeks of really boring boxes full of meat and potatoes, I'm really thrilled to see that blue apron is back with interesting spices and flavors and surprising combinations that I would never be able to think up on my own. Go Blue Apron!"

Purple Carrot for lunch today: Hummus with raw veggies and crispy amaranth OK. I nearly didn't order Purple Carrot this week since the only recipe I really wanted was the tortilla pie/quesadilla thing. This recipe? Hummus and raw veggies? Where you have to make the hummus yourself? The only thing that interested me was the amaranth part. So, anywho. The good parts: it came with very pretty little carrots and a (too tiny) amount of berbere spice. And, of course, the amaranth. Weak parts: why such a plain hummus? If we're making our own, how about some greens? Make it worth it to pull out the blender or food processor! Olive "vinaigrette" (can it be a vinaigrette with no vinegar or acid liquid?) should have more herbs. So, I added leftover purple cauliflower to their yellow/orange cauliflower. Tossed the veggies with olive oil and shichimi and roasted them. Amaranth part was pretty cool! I tossed mine in the rice cooker in the AM with stock and it sat there keeping warm for me until I was ready for it a few hours later. They had you then crisp it up and add berbere. I rather liked the large crispy sections it made, so I did not break it up or try to mix in the berbere (in the future I'd do that at the beginning or mix in right before going in the skillet). So I sprinkled the tasty berbere over the top -- wished there was more! Oh, it was also served with gluten-free tortillas and lemon wedges.

AND the local chef created delivered foods. For example: Taro Peican Weekly Meal Delivery I see more and more services like these popping up in the bay area (from all kinds of cuisines: Taro's full selection )

Yes, I do see more meal kit type packaging in our supermarket. Nothing of the caliber of Sun Basket or Purple Carrot or even Gobble, yet, though. More like Hello Fresh, Blue Apron style -- very mainstream items. No 'weird' spices, black garlic, celeriac, chayote, shiso leaves, etc, etc. Besides a meal kit bundled in one package in supermarkets, it might also be possible to have small-portion item section plus the set of recipe cards specifying what to pick up. That way, if you already have an item on hand, you could skip it (I might not have raspberry vinegar on hand so give me the mini container of that, but I do keep balsamic. Likewise I always have almonds, but rarely pistachios, so give me two Tbsp of them. Yes, I actually do have wild rice, but gimme 1/4 cup of black rice for that dish. BTW, I've tried to buy recipe portions of items from the Whole Foods bulk section -- do you know how hard it is to get just 1/4 cup of some grain out of those gravity dispensers? How about 1 tsp of some spice -- it weighs less than the packaging and the scale can't always pick it up (so sometimes they just give it to you free). Exercise in in frustration. Special, lower popularity, items like mini portions of black garlic or shiso leaves could rotate in. This would cut down on packaging needed and keep ingredients fresher. It would also allow substitution (although already Gobble is 'expanding' the number of meals they offer by having two versions of many dishes available -- one with chicken, say, and the other with steak, or one vegetarian, and one meat. Same sides, sauces, and spicing). We live close to a Whole Foods (on the way home from work, even), so I'm interested to see what Amazon makes of it.

When I think about the costs of the business, I'm surprised they even make 5% before fixed costs! I keep telling my husband that I think Purple Carrot can't be long for this world with their really interesting dishes. Just not enough of an audience for them vs lower cost more mainstream veggie items. So we enjoy them while they are still offering their wonderful variety and inventiveness. We wish we had taken advantage of Din more in their final months with their last round of business changes. Their last gasp was to go non-subscription where you ordered just a day before delivery (or very early that morning if you lived in SF). Since we were using other services that require about a week lead time, we frequently faced a situation where we really, really wanted the Din meals that week, but already had too many dishes coming. There also was no guarantee in that final business model that you could even get their best meals from them: often the dishes would sell out in minutes/hours before I could get online to even see what was on offer.

Dinner was this vegetarian dish from Sun Basket: Quinoa, white bean, and zucchini fritters with tomato and peach salad Sauce is tahini and lemon. I made no additions this time, but cooked the quinoa in my rice cooker for convenience (always comes out perfect). I had thought I made a big mistake: the instructions called for shredding the zucchini and then wringing out the water before mixing it into the batter. I missed the wringing out part and put it in wet. I worried when I read the side-bar on the recipe about how important this was to getting a good crust. But the very wet batter fried up just fine! Very tasty! we really liked this one. Oh, but you know what would have been even better in the salad? Mint instead of basil.

Lunch from Blue Apron: Cod with Tomatillo Salsa and Squash and Sweet Potato Hash Not bad. But both the hash and fish could use some spicing other than salt and pepper. I did add Penzy's "Old World" spice mix to the fish before cooking. I also knew the sweet potatoes could use more than time than they specified to get soft like I like so I nuked them for 2 minutes before frying.

Well, Purple Carrot IS all-vegan, so no meat there! And since we prefer seafood and vegetables dishes (although I love all meats (including organ meats) except chicken breast), you'll see more of those from me even from Sun Basket and Gobble (because that's what I'll pick!). But see that flank steak meal from Gobble -- that's a dish I got only because there were only 2 others that week that were more to my liking (less meat!) and so it was a 'meh' pick for me. Gobble and Sun Basket have other more meat-focused dishes, absolutely, and most services (in the US) are more meat+starch heavy with a token 1 or 2 very uninspiring vegetarian picks. E.g. Blue Apron box arrives today for us, but nothing looked interesting to me for the next 4 weeks following, so I'll be skipping them all. Not only that, but meat is quick and easy to cook because it comes mostly pre-prepped at the grocery. Really good vegetarian dishes are inherently more labor intensive because veggies have traditionally not come pre-prepped at the grocery like meat mostly is. Though more, and more, they are! We can buy riced cauliflower and noodled zucchini and crinkle-cut butternut squash at most groceries now. If everyone had to butcher their own meat individually before each meal, we'd all eat more veggie meals since we just wouldn't have the time. But most non-vegetarian folks (and many vegetarians) won't put up with labor intensive veggie recipes -- hence the mostly uninspiring veggie meals from these services. Purple Carrot, Sun Basket, and Gobble are exceptions. This labor problem also affects restaurants, which is why, I think, I only tend to see really awesome veggie dishes at high-end restaurants. Only hard-core foodies will happily understand and gladly pay more for the amazing vegetable dish that had higher labor costs but lower cost ingredients. For a few weeks we tried PlateJoy. They are a recipe service that gives you a mix of recipes cut down in servings to feed how many you choose and tries to make a set of recipes that use common ingredients so you can use up what you buy. Then they give you a shopping list and either you go shop or use a service like Instacart to pick it up. I've tried Instacart in the past but tipping made the cost much higher and I didn't like our shoppers' choice of produce (they are under time pressure to get orders done fast so I understand). We got decent produce, don't get me wrong! But their recipes were just so-so to us. And in the end, it didn't save us much time and to use up items more efficiently we had to give up variety in dishes (and PlateJoy does let you choose how you want to balance possible waste vs variety). Also, it's harder to get recipes with uncommon ingredients like preserved lemon or black garlic. Software like Paprika can do similar if you have a bank of recipes you want to try (adjust servings, collate a shopping list), but can't automatically match up a recipes so you, say, exactly use a head of cauliflower between 2 recipes that week. I used to do for myself what these mealkits do - plan recipes around new ingredients and new dishes and then go shop. It did take quite a bit (of very fun!) time. And still, I had a lot of food wastage, since I don't particularly love cooking from remainder ingredients (read: I'm not good at making something awesome from remainder ingredients on the fly). Food wastage really makes my husband unhappy, and frequent fridge cleanout meals make me unhappy, so these services make us both happy by eliminating both! It's no wonder that most families end up using the same dozen or so recipes day in, day out.

Yes! These meal kits lend themselves to being a good base to build your own and without you ending up with way too much of any ingredient since the portions are just for two rather than what you'd have to buy in the store. Experimenting also helps you learn to troubleshoot problems in advance with the included recipes. There was a dish I loved that other commenters complained about being too soupy. Mine wasn't and I was going to post saying so and then I remembered that I had just naturally cut back on water when making the dish (and forgot I had, so didn't register that the recipe was bad). Mostly the recipes are good, though, so my husband makes them sometimes. And now even he is taking a look through the fridge in advance to see if there is anything he wants to add before cooking. We also cook together more and more efficiently since there is a printed plan. Wish you were my neighbor, so we could divvy up meals and/or ingredients! Sometimes there is just one dish in a menu I want and the others, meh. If it's Sun Basket, cool, I can double or triple up, but for everyone else I have to decide whether to order something I'm not sure I want to get the one I do want. Although ... maybe about 20% of the time I'm wrong: the dish isn't meh, and I find something new I really like. I'd have taken your tortillas -- I like their thin crispyness.

Ooo, I wish I could try this service: Saffronfix But I'm not in their delivery area.

Ah cool! I bought it in 2015, so don't feel so bad now haven't not used it yet.

The Ottolenghi dishes have been looking fabulous! I have the Plenty ebook (picked it up when it was available for $3.99) but haven't cooked from it yet. Which book do you like more?

And ... back to Purple Carrot (TB12) for dinner (they arrived this morning). First up is a corn and poblano tortilla pie with orange-peppadew salsa. For this one we would be eating dinner very late in the day so I pre-prepped the ingredients (chopping and salsa assembly) hours in advance: The peppadew salsa was great! So easy. Since Whole Foods carries peppadew on the olive bar, I can see making this from time to time. Just a mix of peppadew, orange, lime juice and cilantro. That's it. The tortilla pie was made with beans, corn, poblano pepper, onion, spices, and a little vegan cream cheese (got it this time!). The vegan cream cheese is why they call it a 'quesadilla', but it just adds a subtle note of creaminess.

Hah! We have prosciutto I need to use up too!

First up this week is Sun Basket with Shrimp Skewers with broccolini, radishes, and chermoula (sauce). This is the right amount of broccolini per serving! Much better than the Purple Carrot portion. We added smoked paprika to the shrimp skewers before searing for a bit more color. Preserved lemon flavors the broccolini.

And the last of this week's 6 meals: Southern Spoonbread from Purple Carrot. The meal kit provided ingredients for a corn spoonbread, a tomato and black-eyed pea gravy, and sautéed swiss chard. And it's Purple Carrot's first mistake with us: the tomato-black-eyed-pea-gravy called for 1/4 cup of vegan cream cheese but it was missing from our box. Now, I'm usually very, very good at checking ingredients before I start cooking but this time I rushed to start cooking when I saw the spoonbread needed to bake for 30 minutes. So I was halfway through the recipe when I discovered the missing ingredient. And I sure don't have that on hand! Looked for a substitute and didn't even have yogurt or anything. So, I had to make quick trip to the store mid-recipe while the spoonbread baked. They only had Tofutti vegan cream cheese (which I consider only so-so) so I got real cream cheese. I also added real bacon to the swiss chard. We actually DO often have veggie bacon on hand (we like veggie 'meats'. A lot), but had recently used the last of ours up. Also, this morning I was at Whole Foods and saw cooked okra and shallots on the hot prepared food bar and thought it would be perfect with dinner. So that's the veggie on the back of the plate. This dish has problems and significant promise. The gravy was exceedingly rich. Maybe vegan cream cheese would be better! The spoonbread needs a bit of work. They didn't tell you what size pan to use, but from their photo it looked like theirs was in a small lodge skillet, so I used an 8" one. To get a crust on the bottom, I preheated the skillet with oil while the oven was coming up to temp, and then added more oil before adding the batter (this worked, see photo). After 30 minutes, the center was still very liquid and had a taste of raw flour. It's supposed to be custardy, but the flour needs to be cooked. So I let it go for a total of about 42 minutes. Maybe their pan was bigger than 8". Despite the problems with the spoonbread, we'd probably get this again! Ready for the coming week, with 9 meals: Sun Basket, Purple Carrot (TB12), and Blue Apron. Liamsaunt, did you make your asparagus pesto pasta yet?

Looks like Purple Carrot just makes silent substitutions. One of our dishes this week was to be Sweet Corn Risotto with Lemon Parmesan Broccolini & Chervil But we didn't get chervil, we got basil. The hard-copy recipe card we got lists basil in all the right places. Not a big deal, but I'd rather they do what Sun Basket does and include a note. Or what Gobble does and send email saying that an item has been substituted. We chose the non-TB12 menu this week since it looked better to us, partly because this risotto was offered and we previously made TB12 corn risotto and loved the taste (see photo previously in this thread -- with artichokes). This version is quite different. It uses regular arborio rice instead of brown arborio. It also has less corn, one ear added as whole kernels cut from the cob instead of two ears with one cooked and pureed and one added whole. The TB12 one also has added coconut powder. I liked the prior version better and my husband likes this one better. This one is closer to a traditional risotto though both are much less rich (no added cheese). The regular menu has smaller portions (the TB12 menu is intended for highly active people who need more calories). I over-roasted the broccolini. My fault, I turned off the oven and left it in thinking the risotto was close to finished, it was not. Oops. So we had very crispy broccolini, still tasty. I wish they had give at least twice as much broccolini, however. They had you juice the lemons and serve the juice on the side. I did so, but really, lemon wedges would have been easier both to serve and to use when eating. Like before I used chicken stock as part of the cooking liquid. I mixed the vegan Parmesan into the risotto but topped with real Parmesan.