Have you guys heard of #foodiechats?  It’s only the best twitter chat EVER where you get to chat all things food with your fellow foodie friends.  Every Monday (at 5pm PT/8pm ET) you can follow the #foodiechats stream and interact with your fellow foodies and whatever brand is the sponsor for that night.  In fact, #foodiechats was where I first learned about Blue Apron, a food delivery company that provides all the fresh ingredients you need to make a delicious meal at home.  Since I am a #Foodiechats Ambassador, I was lucky enough to try Blue Apron out for myself.

The main reason I was excited to try Blue Apron was because they use all natural, fresh ingredients and allow you to customize your meals to your own dietary preferences.  You can opt for a vegetarian delivery, seafood delivery, poultry or meat or a combination to your liking.  Since the Englishman and I are both carnivores, we opted for a meat and poultry delivery.

I was also quite impressed with how easy the sign up process was.  You select your dietary preferences, choose a delivery date and that’s it.  You can choose to opt in to however many delivery weeks you want, so there is no pressure to commit to a food plan for an extended period of time.  Each meal averages out to about $9.99 per person (which is a tad on the pricey side).

The Englishman and I generally do all of our grocery shopping on a Friday, so I opted to have my delivery shipped to me on a Tuesday so we wouldn’t have a fridge packed with a ton of groceries already.  Sure enough first thing Tuesday morning a giant box arrived with all of the ingredients in an insulated cooler.  Everything was individually packaged which is a nice touch but does create a lot of excessive waste.  I hope Blue Apron can find a better way to condense their packaging a bit.

The menu for my week included was Flank Steak a Jus, Mushroom Toast and Chicken Meatballs with Ramen.  I liked how Blue Apron emailed me a few days prior with a menu preview, so I knew exactly what I was getting.  Your food shipment also comes with recipe cards and instructions for each dish, which I found to be very helpful.  The only complaint I would have is the nutrition information/ingredients wasn’t listed so some of the items I didn’t eat (like the ramen) due to my allergies.

The first dish we made was the Flank Steak with roasted dijon cauliflower, pickled baby turnips and watercress.  Emily from A Nutritionist Eats mentioned this in her review as well, but the dishes are a bit time-consuming (20-30 minutes).  They definitely aren’t ones you can just whip up on the fly.  The Englishman and I decided to tag team this dish, and he prepped the steak and cauliflower and I took charge of the turnips and watercress.

We cheated slightly on the cauliflower and coated it in Maui onion mustard instead (because it’s amazing), but other than that we followed the recipe to a T.  And when all was said and done, it was quite delicious!

There was plenty of meat for the both of us to share, and I liked the roasted cauliflower and turnips on the side.  I normally wouldn’t eat turnips, so I’m glad that Blue Apron included them in this meal!

For the next two meals I will admit we took a bit of our own “liberties” so to speak.  I loved the concept of the mixed mushroom toasts, so we caramelized some onions with the mushrooms in a skillet and then served them over some homemade bread we made ourselves with some meat on the side (again, carnivores).  I also ended up using my own mayo since I wasn’t sure of the ingredients in the one that was provided.

Last but not least was the Chicken Meatballs with Ramen which was the hardest one for me.  We ended up not using all of the ingredients due to my allergies and kind of created our own thing which is why I don’t have a picture of the final meal.

So would I use Blue Apron again?  I really liked the concept, especially because some nights the Englishman and I work late and the last thing we want to do is figure out what is for dinner, but I don’t think I would make it a regular thing until they provide more customization to your meals so I can order stuff without corn, soy, etc.  And as I mentioned above, the price tag is a little steep, but it definitely beats spending money on a mediocre meal out.

Now to the fun stuff!  The wonderful team at Blue Apron is offering Sweet Potato Bites readers an opportunity to try out TWO Free Blue Apron Meals!  Simply visit https://www.blueapron.com/foodiechats to sign up for your Blue Apron trial.  I definitely think it’s worth trying (especially if you like to cook), and this way you can have a nice meal ready to go while you participate in #foodiechats!

Thank you to Blue Apron and #Foodiechats for the opportunity!