Things to come

So if you are a regular around these parts you noticed that I have been absent this past week. I am getting better at writing consistently but sometimes personally I need to take a step back to breathe and reevaluate my life. Even though I feel I wasn’t productive in this facet of my life things are changing and I feel that good things are on their way.

I am getting prepared to go back to school July 1st at UC Berkeley… online, of course. More than anyone can know I wanted to go back to school to get my Masters but financially that just is not realistic t this point in time. It kills me to put that on hold but I have to remind myself that things happen for a reason. And I don’t feel too entirely crushed that I cannot go back right away to get my Masters because of the fact that I will be starting a program at UC Berkeley for Project Management. My employer has a partnership with a trust that has partnerships with several different schools and they offer these programs to us at no cost. When I was told about the project management course I jumped at the opportunity; this totally relates to my desire to be in the field of communications and public relations, it also curbs my appetite for school and the best part I think is that I don’t have to take out another ginormous student loan. I feel that is a definite win-win situation.

I also picked up another little job, I am now the Administrative Assistant for the Public Relations Society of America, Inland Empire Chapter. I already do work for the Los Angeles Chapter of PRSA so I figured that this position was a no-brainer; I have about the same responsibilities as I do with Los Angeles and it allows me the opportunity to network with professionals that are in my area. Although I love LA and I love the people I work with and meet every month, it is nice to not have to leave my house hours before hand to fight LA traffic. This job is temporary only until December of this year but the way I see it, it is a resume booster as well as experience.

I also took a break from working out, I was beginning to feel like working out was all I would do in the day; well working out and working. I would wake up between 4:45am and 5:15 am, go to the gym, come home and get ready for work and after work I would come home and do whatever I needed to do around the house always keeping in mind that I needed to make sure I was in bed no later than 10pm otherwise I wasn’t getting up in the morning. It felt like I wasn’t doing much of anything else so I decided to take a step back and make sure that all of my other commitments were in order and nothing was being neglected. I know that people say you shouldn’t be out of the gym for too long because it makes you lazy or it makes it harder to get back into a routine; I believe this. Although I love being able to sleep in and stay up later I do miss being active. Exercising is something that I like to do, it makes me happy and it sure helps me to sleep better at night.

This past week I have been shopping too much, mostly for stuff I legitimately need but also for a lot that I just really wanted. So this coming week I think I want to devote to things I’m digging; products, people, companies, etc. I feel that although I do not have a large following of readers, I do greatly appreciate honest reviews and information about products that I might be interested, so maybe someone will stumble upon my blog and I will have been helpful? Who knows either way that is what is to come this week.

Until next time

r

6/22/14

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Blue Apron

So a couple of months ago Marlboro Man and I tried the meal delivery service Plated; a few weeks after trying Plated a friend of mine mentioned that he used a service called Blue Apron and was able to ‘gift’ free meals because of his subscription with the company. So my friend gifted us a box, Marlboro Man and I selected the 3 meals that we thought looked the most delicious and waited for the box to arrive.  In case you were wondering we picked, 3-Chile Beef Chili with Red Kidney Beans and Pepper Jack Cheese, Tilapia Veracruzana with Yellow Rice, and Roasted Chicken with Jalapeño-Herb Salsa, Mixed Citrus & Cracked Wheat Berries. Yum!!

 

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When the box got to the house it was pretty similar to that of Plated. The packing was sturdy and insulated; the day our food it arrived it was pretty hot outside and we knew we weren’t going to be home for the devilry. I was pretty skeptical that anything could be kept fresh in the heat that we were having that weekend, but when we got home and took the box inside everything was still cold and showed no signs of spoilage; to my surprise.

Everything was similarly packaged with the Blue Apron service. One thing that Plated did differently that I rather liked was the way they packaged the produce. Plated used those green vegetable bags that you see in the market that keep your produce fresher, longer. In the Plated bags was the produce as well as all the ingredients to complete the dish. Blue Apron kind of just had the veggies all loose in the box; with the exception of herbs and some of the more fragile veggies which were placed in ziplock bags.

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As I mentioned before Plated packed all the ingredients for one recipe in a green produce bag, Blue Apron had all of the odds and ends things in little brown paper bags labeled with what dish that they were for; “knick-knacks.”  Blue Apron and Plated both had their meats packaged the same way; at the bottom of the box with extra ice packs or gel packs to keep the meat from spoiling.

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Blue Apron also gave recipe cards, which were beautiful. The Blue Apron cards were much cleaner looking, the directions were more straight forward; I messed up a recipe in the Plated box because it was simply too complex to be a single step. It appears that Blue Apron not only looked at the recipe in terms of ease of making, they also considered the aesthetics, weird to think that recipe cards can even be talked about in terms of looks but these were just much nicer to look at.

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Unlike Plated I don’t know what happened but I did not take step-by-step pictures of the process. I do however have pictures of the end results of two of the dishes; we never got around to making the Roasted Chicken with Cracked Wheat Berries.

The 3-Chile Beef Chili was so delicious and seriously so simple to make, it too me maybe 20 minutes of so. I actually made this chili again this past weekend but changed a couple of things around. Here are two pictures of the chili, unmade all ingredients from the box and then a finished picture of the meal.

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All of the stuff that the company sent was easily enough for 3 servings of the chili, Blue Apron absolutely did not skimp on ingredients and possibly took into consideration that people might have more than a single serving when they are eating the chili.

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I have to admit that the recipes in Blue Apron were much simpler and they were things that I would make again. I am not a fish eater, I don’t care for the texture and consistency of cooked fish so with that being said I have never cooked fish, ever. The fish dish was super easy to cook and the fish was very tasty; not what I was expecting at all. Blue Apron took an ingredient that maybe not all people are comfortable with cooking and paired it with common ingredients to make a very simple, yet delicious dish. I would most certainly make the Tilapia dish again.

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So now that I have tried both services I can make a judgement based on my experience.

If I was someone who was going to do this on a regular basis I would go with the Blue Apron service for several reasons.

I felt that the recipes, although both realistic, were much more a real dinner dish concept with Blue Apron. They were things I could easily make again and feel comfortable doing so. The recipes with Plated felt a little more fancy, something that you would’t do every night. Blue Apron recipes max took me 30 minutes, Plated however took me more time depending on the dish; I remember when I did the roasted chicken on Plated that took me upwards of 45 minutes. Marlboro Man and I both agree that that dishes from Blue Apron were much tastier than the of Plated. Plated dishes tasted bland, although they had spices and ingredients to make a nice flavor we both found ourselves feeling like the dish was missing something and ended up adding some other ingredients to the dishes. Blue Apron’s dishes were nicely seasoned and flavored and except for a bit of salt or pepper they did not need much else.

Blue Apron offers more bang for your buck. We got 3 meals, 2 plates each for free but if you paid it would have been $59.94; which comes out to about $9.99 a plate. The price per plate on Plated depended on the dish that was made but ranged from about $12-$15 per plate, if you signed up and paid a membership fee you got a slight break on the price of the plates. With the Plated service we got 2 meals, 2 plates per meal for $20 because of the promo that I used but if you were to use this service in real life it would cost around $80-$100 depending on the meals that you selected not to mention the $20 shipping fee that the company charges. For the average person Plated is just too expensive especially considering that you don’t get as many meals as you do with Blue Apron.

A few more reasons why I like Blue Apron is that if I skip a week of food I am still able to get those recipes off of their website. Say for whatever reason you want to skip your meals because of financial reasons, being out of town, or whatever your reason but you see something on the site that looks like something you would like to try you have the option of getting the recipe and just flying solo with it. I think that is pretty awesome. Although we have not used either service again I do still peek the recipes on Blue Apron to see if there is anything that I want to make for dinner. Plated does not offer their recipes up for the taking.

Plated charges you a membership fee to get a ‘discounted’ rate per plate. Blue Apron does not require a membership to get a better rate, all of their plates cost the same price across the board. Like I mentioned before Plated also charges shipping while Blue Apron does not. I felt that Plated had a bunch of rather unnecessary charges, maybe they need extra funding to keep their momentum or maybe they just feel that these are things they should charge; I am not really too sure, but if you are like me you like to save money where you can and as much of it as you can.

One other thing I would like to mention is that although I enjoyed using both services and clearly I favored Blue Apron of the two I wish that the companies could both figure out a way to be less wasteful when it comes to preparing the boxes of meals. Everything is bagged separately in ziplock bags, or plastic containers, and even little bottles for items like vinegar and soy sauce. That is an excessive amount of waste, and then take into consideration that box that they ship it in. Although the box is easily tossable, all of the insulation and ice packs are things that it would be nice to be able to reuse. I would not be surprised if a third company emerges who cuts down the cost even more and is able to figure out a way to recycle the items they send out, whether it be having the consumer mail back a reusable cooler type package or even if they were to use less ziplock bags I am sure that there is a way to figure that out.

Have you tried Blue Apron? or maybe even Plated? Which did you prefer and why? Let me know

Until next time

r

6/11/14

 

Also it is worth noting that neither company paid for me to write about them, nor did they give me anything, so my opinions are solely my own and without preferential influences.