We tried Blue Apron for the first time last night – after hearing friends and colleagues rave about it and post lovely pictures on Facebook. One of my friends sent me a coupon and I signed up, scheduled my first delivery and waited to be impressed.

Ordering online was super easy. I followed the link from the coupon Alex sent me and signed on to Blue Apron’s app. All very quick and easy. I picked a meal plan – there were a few choices – meals for two, meals for 4. I ended up choosing meals for 4 (me and three teenagers) although a meal for 6 might have been a better choice… if it were a choice, but more on that later.

Scheduling was interesting. It gave me a choice of deliveries on Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday. I ended up choosing Wednesday even though I didn’t really want to have more food delivered on Wednesday as I already have my farm share of fruits and veggies delivered on Wednesday and I thought that it would be too much food all at once. In the end, I figured I could most easily cook the meals during the week and that the weekend was too unpredictable at the moment to take a delivery later in the week. I would have preferred Monday – then I could have two meals I didn’t have to think about, delivered early in the week. Oh well, we’ll try Wednesdays and see how that works out. I really like that you can cancel a delivery anytime. Later, I went through the website, not the app, to cancel every other week (the weeks I don’t have the kids), because I didn’t think I could eat 8 meals during the week I didn’t have the kids. It was very easy to control the scheduling.

Receipt and delivery was painless. a giant box was delivered silently to my front door – no doorbell ringing – that was weird. Wouldn’t you want to know if a package had been left at your door? We’ve been having packages stolen off front porches in our area so, yes, I would like to know a package and been left on my porch. Ring the doorbell next time! All of the food in the box was well wrapped in insulated bubble wrap with several blocks of ice. (Now I need to figure out how to recycle the ice packs and bubble wrap packaging.) All of the food was cold, with a temperature somewhere between frozen and thawing. I stuck it all in the fridge before heading to work. I could see why people are worried about the food being delivered when they aren’t home and the box sitting in the sun all day. But with the amount of ice and how it was wrapped, I don’t think that is a concern.

Cooking the food was quite an adventure. The recipes were all beautifully presented on 8.5 x 11 card stock with easy to read instructions and pictures. I tried to follow all of the instructions but I didn’t really like how they were written all together. And I didn’t like having to prep all the food in little bowls to begin with. I’m more of a chop and cut as you go kind of cook. I also prefer a recipe for each item to be discrete and by itself. I ended up resorting to having Bryce read each step out loud to me to make sure we had done everything for each step.

I had the kids help prep things which led to massive complaints from Jasper who had been given the tedious task of stripping all of the thyme leaves of the stalks (while he watched football, mind you; even then, he could be heard moaning, “Why couldn’t they just give you a tablespoon of dried herbs?”). Side note: I don’t recommend preparing things while one kid empties the dishwasher because where ever you are standing to chop things or stir the pot is exactly where he will need to be to put away something. That was annoying… yet controllable. Even with all the little bowls and prep work, it was easy to follow the instructions and cook everything. And I liked that the recipes came with another card on cilantro and how to prep it. Good information.

Eating was the fun part. We actually all sat down to dinner at the same time and ate together. With daily changing football practice times and soccer practice it has been hard to sit down at the same time for meals since school and sports started. The meal we cooked was the Southern-style Shrimp Boil with a side salad of green beans and tomatoes. Jasper was done eating by the time McKinley sat down to eat. He immediately opened the fridge again for more food – he ate a leftover sausage because there weren’t anymore shrimp in the pan. Bryce wasn’t too sure about the spices on the shrimp boil. I tried to explain to him the classicness of the dish from the South and how the spices were like that only milder. He wasn’t impressed and it didn’t make him like those spaces. I think he would have been perfectly fine with the food if he could have eaten it without the spices. As all the shrimp had disappeared, Jasper went trolling on everyone’s plate for more. I had to guard mine carefully!

We had a tiny bit of potatoes and one piece of corn, plus a few of the green beans leftover. I think the size of the meal was fine for most families of 4, but with three male teenagers, I could have used twice as much shrimp. Maybe I’ll have to supplement the meat portions of the meals for my kids. We’ll see. Next up is Blackened Chicken Under a “Brick.”