Step Up To The Plate : Plated, round 3

You know what sounded fun? An Iron Chef style competition where the boy and I each made a meal and everyone got to choose the best one at dinner. You know what's not fun? Rancid pineapple, Chinese broccoli, and losing.

Blue Apron's Orange Shrimp and Broccoli soundly stomped Plated's Sticky Pineapple Chicken that was not in fact sticky. The fresh pineapple they sent had taken a turn, so I replaced it with some from the pantry. The chicken was cooked, and then sliced, which seemed so odd for a stir-fry type dish and tasted even stranger. The sauce was more of a seasoning than anything. Turns out we all dislike Chinese broccoli, even though we love broccoli and broccolini. Total dinner fail. Thank goodness we had the yummy orange shrimp to console ourselves with.



We ordered the Hoisin Duck Buns because duck and Chinese buns. The buns and duck patties were a hit. The carrot fires? A mushy miss. I loved the ginger slaw, the kids did not. They did however love the buns themselves. Luckily the recipe leaves a few leftover for straight up munching.

Baked Calamari with Garlic Breadcrumbs and Papas Bravas. Now that is one long recipe title! I tend to think of calamari as an Italian dish. Our whole family can clear two plates of the stuff in under five minutes. But making it at home felt daunting and I loathe to fry just about anything. But this was baked, and while I remained skeptical, worth a shot.

This was AMAZING. Like whoa, we must recreate this amazing. Creamy fingerling potatoes are roasted until golden, calamari is tossed with breadcrumbs and baked, spinach wilts over the hot potatoes, and a creamy-smoky sauce is drizzled over with lemon and parsley and OH MY WOW. If you see it on Plated, you have to order it.

This is the issue with Plated. Some dishes are garbage-worthy, others knock your socks off. When the ingredients are on, they're fantastic. And other times your pineapple is rotten and stuff is growing on the garlic.

*This post has three recipes because I got my stuff mixed up on week one. Not that it matters, really. I paid for this experiment myself. Plated doesn't know me and neither does Blue Apron. They should, I'm a delight.

For more of our Plated journey...

If you want to try Plated, here's a link to a free box...

See what we thought of other meal kits...

We Tried Plated : Round Two

Our first meal kit delivery from Plated covered all the bases - delicious, meh, and toss that in the garbage right now! Full of hope and memories of curried lamb tacos, we tried again. This time with Honey Soy Pork with noodles and Lamb Kofta with tzatziki. Both sounded fantastic, and were things I didn't think my family would try if it didn't come from a service.

The final meals tasted great, but there were some hiccups along the way. Before the ingredients were completely unboxed we had a rotten cucumber, moldy garlic (which I didn't know could be a thing), and putrid red cabbage. Fun times. There was also a bag of random pine nuts that didn't belong to either recipe.

I had garlic and cucumber on hand, so easily replaced those. I didn't have cabbage, so the red pepper slaw to accompany the kofta was just red peppers. Even with the challenges, both dinners were a hit. Doubly so for the kofta because my kids tried bulgur!

Honey Soy Pork with peanut noodles and bok choy. What's not to love about peanut noodles? These were easy and the hot sauce could be added to taste, which was perfect since our crew runs from no-spice to dare me to eat this spoon of wasabi. The honey in the marinade for the pork caused it to burn, so most of the pork wasn't edible.

Lamb Kofta with tzatziki, bulgar, and red pepper slaw. The slaw was missing the red cabbage, but I think I would prefer it this way. Dinner felt fresh and light and different. The kids dove into the fridge for pitas, but they tried the bulgur, so that was a win.

For more of our Plated journey...

If you want to try Plated, here's a link to a free box...

See what we thought of other meal kits...

Plated: What's For Dinner?

I'm going to be up front about it - Plated is our favorite. Which may seem strange because their meals are hit or miss. Sometimes the fresh produce isn't fresh, or even edible. Sometimes the recipe misses the mark. Others take for-freaking-ever to make. The redeeming factor is the variety and portions. We've tried dishes and ingredients I never would have attempted to sneak by the kids, or even the husband. And more often than not, the 4-portion meal feeds our family of 5.

Plated has twenty dinners to choose from each week, and available a month in advance. Plus two dessert options, which aren't offered by many other services. There are options for vegetarian, family-friendly, stovetop-only.. We opt to see everything they offer and go from there.

Pricing is straightforward - $9.95 per meal for our family plan dinner for four, twice a week. A smidge less than $80 a week. Some of the recipes aren't worth that $40 price tag (I'm looking at you tomato bisque) while others make up for it (i.e. Lamb Merguez).

We ordered an eclectic mix for our first box. Curried Lamb Tacos, Tomato Basic Shrimp & Grits, and Cuban Chicken Empanadas. We loved one, found the other odd, and the third was straight-up disgusting and went in the trash. Yes, that bad.

Curried Lamb Tacos. We love lamb curry. We love tacos. We weren't convinced the two had any business on the same plate until this delightful dish. If this had been a Pinterest recipe, none of the kids would have tried it. Because it came from this novel box meal kit, they were game. And loved it. All of us. This is how our love affair with Plated began, but the course of true love took a few turns...


Tomato Basil Shrimp & Grits. Shrimp is good. Grits can be good. Tomato and basil have a happy marriage. And yet, this didn't work. Maybe because it made enough grits to feed a neighborhood, but only enough flavor for a family. Bland as can be, when they had such promise. The shrimp and tomato mixture would have been better with pasta, or garlic bread, or both.

Cuban Chicken Empanadas. I do not know what was in the spice packet that came in this kit, but it tasted like dirt. Honestly. And these took forever to make. So I spent an hour making and baking only to have two trays of empanadas no one would eat. Good times. I emailed to say I thought something had gone bad in the spice mix, but never heard back.


For more of our Plated journey...

If you want to try Plated, here's a link to a free box...

See what we thought of other meal kits...

We Tried: Meal Delivery Kits

Dinner Delivered! Well, kind of. All the ingredients are in a box and easy to follow recipes are included - but you're doing the cooking. Fine in theory, but I wasn't sure how it worked out in real life. Sure, there were a bajillion blog articles about them, but the ones I found were sponsored posts. You know, where the company gifts the blogger a box in exchange for an 'honest' review. Here's the thing, if you don't like something and tell the world why, you're honest but not likely to get more opportunities for 'honest' reviews. It's a business, y'all.

Since I couldn't get the straight goss online, I asked the Facebook hive-mind.I guess I don't hang with a dinner boxer crowd because I only got a few 'we tried it' and a couple 'the kids didn't like it'. The overwhelming response was 'no, but we've been thinking about trying it'. Hmmm. Now I was curious.

A new meal kit company ad shows up on my Facebook feed on the regular. I decided to take advantage of all the '$$ off your first box' offers and try a few. To be fair, I tried more than one box from each company. It made the experiment more expensive, but any business can have an off week. I know I do. 

I love to cook, but I hated making dinner. 

I didn't think meal delivery kits would stand a chance with my picky bunch, so I never bothered to try until a Blue Apron box showed up on the shelves at Costco. No commitment, no pressure for everyone to like it. The novelty of it had my fifteen-year-old interested enough to offer to do it with me. That right there reeled me in. It's hard to find things to do with teenagers. Plus, when they were younger they were much more l likely to try new foods if they'd helped in the kitchen. 

For me the step-by-step directions seemed tedious, but they were perfect for my son. By the time we plated our dinner that night I knew he'd be able to prepare any dinner kit. Meal delivery kits had never been so attractive...

The first dinner was rather meh, but I had such fun preparing it with my son  that when Hello Fresh popped up on Facebook, I signed up. Plated? Sure. Home Chef? Let's give it a try. Marley Spoon? Well, if Martha thinks so...

I thought it would be fun to try them out, and my family was along for the ride. I'll share our real-life experiences, and since I paid for this little experiment, all opinions will be ours alone. Not that we're big on sugar coating anything but doughnuts. Mmm, doughnuts. 

BLUE APRON

HELLO FRESH

PLATED

HOME CHEF

MARLEY SPOON

FRED MEYER/KROGER