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Tag Archives: Glazed Chicken drumsticks

Plated Review! Tried Three Different Services! Part 2 of 4!

18 Tuesday Aug 2015

Posted by elanbuendia in Cooking, Cooking for Family and Babe, Meal Delivery Reviews, Reviews

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Tags

Blue Apron Meal Reviews, Blue Apron Reviews, Chicken with Carrots and Dates, Colette's Lemon Tree, Glazed Chicken drumsticks, Grilled Roasted Chicken, hello fresh delivery service, plated delivery service, plated meal delivery, plated meal reviews, Ribollita Stew, Sesame Ginger Wild Salmon, Soup Spoons, Tuscan Ribollita Stew, Wild Salmon Miso

I’m writing a 4-Part Blog Series on our experiences and reviews of three (3) Meal Delivery Services : Reviews and Pictures of each service, in order in which we used them. We attempted to use each service for two weeks.
Blue Apron    :    Plated    :    HelloFresh
I will complete the series with a recommendation of our preferred service!! Basically, the Winner!

Thanks for joining me and my family on this culinary journey!

~ PLATED ~

PLATED

The Back Story
I saw the ‘Sponsored’ offer floating around Facebook and decided to try Plated next! The Offer was for $40 off a week’s delivery!

Now, I can offer YOU two (2) Free Plates with your first week.
Just Click Here!

The Details
Plated offers a minimum of four (4) ‘plates’ per week…in other words, 2 meals for 2 people. This can be increased all the way to six (6) plates per meal/recipe.
We used our plates for either Lunch or Dinner depending on the meal and our interests for the day.
This is a gourmet delivery service, there is no presumption of time to prepare, as it’s about the experience.
Plates range from $12-$24 per plate, depending on how fancy and ingredient heavy the recipe is! Shipping is included, however that’s a range of $24-$96 for the minimum of four (4) plates.
To compare apples to apples, I’ll use the base price, so six (6) total plates will be…$72.00 per week!

The Pros
~ Fresh ingredients, including hormone free meat and sustainable seafood.
~ Beautiful Recipe cards with pictures of completed dishes. Includes a little history of the dish and are reusable!
~ One can choose Vegetarian plates, which are typically always base price.
~ True to listed prep time…within about 10mins. So I knew what to expect.
~ Can edit your ‘Taste Profile’ to include or exclude plates containing :
Beef, Poultry, Vegetarian, Lamb, Pork, Fish, Seafood.
~ Delivery options allow for weekly or every other week/fortnightly shipments.
~ Delivery was on Wednesday! (earlier in the week than Blue Apron offered.)
~ Nutritional Facts, including allergen ingredients, on each meal’s ingredient bag.
~ I enjoyed that each ingredient was label with the meal title it joins with!
~ Leftovers! (we had a large meal and were able to eat leftover next day for lunch.)

The Cons
~ Packaging Waste…sorry but this makes me cringe. Though I was able to pass along the cold packs and foiled bubble wrap to local fisherman and such.
~ Ingredient waste…in our first recipe (Ribollita) directions actually read, “Peel red onion and thinly slice 1/2, discarding remainder.” (Discard remainder!? Surely, there are other uses for a whole half of a red onion!)
~ The ‘Taste Profile’ is limited and only offers the opportunity to select main entree types : Poultry, Fish, Vegetarian, Lamb, Beef, Shellfish, Pork.
We do have a few restrictions…some Gluten-Free, some Spices, and some Seafood.
~ Ordering! UGH! Really!? It was not as straight forward at BlueApron, in which they simply picked 3 meals for you and if you made no modifications then they would send those 3 meals! At Plated, you have to go in and pick your meals (they do not auto-select for you) and then you must ‘check out’ in order for those meals to be delivered. Of course, my first week I didn’t understand this and upon calling on ‘drop day’ to ask if it was going to ship or not, they simply told me that I wouldn’t be getting my box that week (2nd week). UGH! I was left in a lurch, because BlueApron couldn’t pick up the slack that late in the week…so, I just went to the market myself! HA! No big deal, of course! But, of course, it was annoying.

The Goods
Week 1, First Meal :
Tuscan Ribollita Stew with White Beans and Toast
40 Minutes
Not Gluten-Free

Plated Ribolitta StewThis was a nice way to make a gourmet soup. I loved the white bean and kale ingredients. I enjoyed the final preparation of broiling with sliced red onion and added cheese.
This was yummy and offered us leftovers!

Plated Soup Spoons

Miso Hungry…Indeed! Soup Nazi…because…Seinfeld fan here!

Modifications : Added Mozzarella atop.

PLUS…I was stoked we got to use our custom Soup Spoons, created by my friends at Colette’s Lemon Tree!
I’m mean these soup spoons are too funny…and I love the juxtaposition of having these sayings on Granny’s Silverware. 🙂

Week 1, Second Meal :
Sesame Ginger Wild Salmon and Tatsoi in Miso Broth
35 Minutes
Gluten-Free

Plated Wild Salmon MisoI’d never prepared miso before and was stoked to use this as an ingredient. It turned out lovely, fun to have potatoes and tatsoi (greens) in this dish.
This made me unafraid to begin using miso on my own…in my own soup creations!
I’ve recently learned, that since Miso has great probiotic benefits, to add it last so as to retain most of that benefit and not heat up the probiotics too much, too long. (Wanted to pass that little nugget of info on to you!)

Modifications : Added Garlic and extra Sesame Oil

Week 1, Third Meal :
Sweet and Spicy Roast Chicken with Carrots and Dates
50
Minutes (and marinate time)
Gluten-Free

Plated Chicken RoastFor some reason, I kept putting off making this third meal.
I liked what Plated was offering, but it wasn’t super duper overly wow’ed by the the supposed gourmet-ness of it all. So, I lost interest with a simple roast chicken dish…by the time I went to it a few days later, chicken when bad, of course, that was, actually, my bad to begin with!
So, we brought home some Chicken Thighs instead and set out to prepare the dish. I liked the marinade, it was yummy, and the addition of dates was a novel approach.

Modifications : Bought Chicken Thighs to use.

Week 2, First Meal :
…No second week!
I just couldn’t get motivated enough to move forward with Plated.
(Couldn’t be bothered!)

I guess this mean you’ll figure out that Plated was not the winner, but stay tuned there is one more service! And then a Winner will be announced!
Hello Fresh…
If you don’t want to wait around for posts…
You can get $40 off your first order with Code : YVHN87
If you do, let me know what YOU think! 🙂

Overall Impression
Good, I can see the potential for lovely, gourmet meals. But the cost compared to other services and the pain of ordering squelch my interest in using Plated.

I love how they have the nutrition facts for each meal presented on the bag that contains each meals ingredients!

Plated Nutrition Facts

Be sure to check back this week…I’ll be posting parts 3, and 4 every couple days! Next up…Hello Fresh review!

Oh my gosh...could soy sauce get any cuter!? :)

Oh my gosh…could soy sauce get any cuter!? 🙂

This post contains referral links.

Blue Apron Review! Tried Three Different Services! Part 1 of 4!

17 Monday Aug 2015

Posted by elanbuendia in Cooking, Cooking for Family and Babe, Meal Delivery Reviews, Reviews

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Bagoong, beef on weck sandwiches, Blue Apron Meal Reviews, Blue Apron Reviews, Chicken Schnitzel, Crockpot, Crockpot meals, Croque Monsieur, Filipino Laing, Glazed Chicken drumsticks, hello fresh delivery service, Hello Fresh discount, Leek and Potatoes, plated delivery service, rice salad, Seared Hake

I’m writing a 4-Part Blog Series on our experiences and reviews of three (3) Meal Delivery Services : Reviews and Pictures of each service, in order in which we used them. We attempted to use each service for two weeks.
Blue Apron    :    Plated    :    HelloFresh
I will complete the series with a recommendation of our preferred service!! Basically, the Winner!

Thanks for joining me and my family on this culinary journey!

~ BLUE APRON ~

Blue Apron Box Oepn

The Back Story
A mama friend sent me a referral link for a week of free meals with Blue Apron! How could I not go for that!?

Having a toddler makes meal-planning a tad bit ‘cumbersome’…and, even though, it was CrockPot season, I thought it would be nice to have meal options ‘outside the pot’. 🙂 I quickly signed-up!
Also, I love to cook and wanted to get some inspiration!

I was only offered the option of delivery on Thursday or Friday. I wanted something earlier in the week to allow for spontaneous weekend dining out, without worry of spoiling meals in the fridge.

The Details
Blue Apron offers 3 days of meals for 2 people (this is what ‘a week’ is).
The meals range from 500-700 calories, include fresh ingredients, and are suppose to take about 35mins to make.
All for $9.99 per meal…so, $59.94 per week!

After you’ve been with them for awhile they offer a referral link to send to friends. But I moved on after two weeks (one paid week) to the other services…thus, they did not offer me a link to share with my readers!

The Pros
~ Least Expensive of all the services :
$59.94 including shipping, for 6 total meals = $9.99 per meal
~ Fresh ingredients, including hormone free meat.
~ Quick prep recipes…most were fairly true to around the 35min completion time.
~ Beautiful Recipe cards with pictures of completed dishes. Includes a little history of the dish and are reusable!
~ One can choose a Vegetarian Option, which is slightly less expensive.

The Cons
~ Late delivery…in week AND time of day!
The earliest day we could receive our box, at the time, was Thursday!
So, I waited all day on our first Thursday…and dun, dun, dun…received our box at 8:40pm (Eight-Freaking-Forty!). Needless to say, that first night’s dinner was not a Blue Apron dinner and our Toddler went to bed a bit later than normal!
~ Packaging Waste…sorry but this makes me cringe. Though I was able to pass along the cold packs and foiled bubble wrap to local fisherman and such.
~ Recipes that were not true to the 35min time…were so far off! Nearly an hour!
~ The ‘Dietary Profile’ is limited and only offers the opportunity to select main protein sources : Beef, Poultry, Fish, Lamb, Pork, Shellfish.
We do have a few restrictions…some Gluten-Free, some Spices, and some Seafood.

The Goods
Week 1, First Meal :
Croque Monsieur-Style Sandwiches w. Bacon, Radish, Little Gem Salad
35 Minutes
Not Gluten-Free

I’ve seen this on the menu at our favorite French Cafe in Redwood City, Ca. Pamplemousse. Though I’d never ordered it myself when we lived there!
Boy, was I missing out, this was delicious!
Blue Apron portions were big and the salad was huge!

Modifications : Bacon on the side, Substituted Provolone for the Swiss.

Blue Aprong Croque

Week 1, Second Meal :
Seared Hake w. Melted Leeks & Fingerling Potatoes
50+ Minutes
Gluten-Free

I am a Leek and Potato girl, and hubs is a fish guy…so this meal was so our style!
However, the prep took forever and our total time was 50+ minutes before we ate.
Thankfully we ate it at lunch and, thus, weren’t set back for a late dinner.

Modifications : Omitted Paprika and Added Garlic

Blue Apron Hake

Week 1, Third Meal :
Yuzu Kosho-Glazed Chicken Drumsticks w. Shitake, Turnip & Rice Salad
5
5 Minutes
Gluten-Free
(Prepared on the 5th day from delivery (!) for Dinner, due to late delivery as described above in the Cons section.)

This was another wonderful dish that is very much our style.
It had a wonderful flavor and was one that our toddler enjoyed as well!
There was plenty of food for more than the allotted two servings.

Modifications : Substituted Organic Brown Rice for the Jasmine, Added Extra Sesame Oil, Omitted the Togarashi Spice Blend due to being unsure of Paprika, would have loved more Ginger.

Blue Apron Drumsticks

Week 2, First Meal :
Beef on Weck Sandwiches w. Heirloom Potato Salad
30 Minutes
Not Gluten-Free

Oh. My. Goodness! This was good! We didn’t know what to expect, and we were pleasantly surprised! The delicious crunch of the airy bread was just too amazing!
However, the beef was thinly sliced vs. shaved, as was stated in the ingredients…shaved would have been so lovely! Plus, I looooove Arugula!

Modifications : Panfried Bread in Butter vs. warming in oven, Added Mayo to Potato Salad, Added provolone to sandwich.

Blue Apron Beef Weck

Week 2, Second Meal :
Shrimp & Mustard Green Laing w. Jasmine Rice
30 Minutes
Gluten-Free

Ohhhh…yeah…this is our style, I mean Hubs is Filipino, afterall!
This was good and tasty, I loved the shrimp with the sauce, and the freshness of the cilantro was amazing.

Modifications : Substituted Organic Brown Rice vs. Jasmine Rice, Needed my own Garlic (as it was not in the box!), Kept Bagoong on the side for hubs to eat as desired!

Blue Apron Laing

Week 2, Third Meal :
Chicken Schnitzel w. Watercress, Apple, Beet & Red Walnut Salad
35+ Minutes
Not Gluten-Free

This was so yummy…just straight up goodness.

Modifications : Surprisingly, no modifications…that is so rare for me!!

BLue Apron Schnitzel

Overall Impression
Very good, except for the late deliveries.

I love how they have little brown bags labelled as “Chicken Knick Knacks” and such, these are all the little goodies for each meal, so you know where it is!

Blue Apron KnickKnacsk

Be sure to check back this week…I’ll be posting parts 2, 3, and 4 (THE WINNER!) every couple days! Next up…Plated Review!

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