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-Katie and Nick
Pretty good! I'm not sure I have much to say about this; it's rice, corn, black beans, and mango in a cardboard box you microwave and eat. Pretty hard to mess up, and it was not messed up. The spice did get to me a little bit, but the mango really seemed to help calm it down whenever I got a bite. Solid meal. I could take or leave the black beans.
Quick Bite from Katie: I thought my little bite was good. This is going on my maybe pile of things I'd order again once we have our preferences down. The only downside to Mosaic so far is that there is a limited number of dishes.
I quite liked this. I could have used more noodles but when can I not? The spice was just starting to really get to me when I finished. The tofu had really soaked up the sauce, which was good since as you may know, it doesn't have a good taste on its own. The carrots were a good accent to the spice. I could have definitely used more noodles though. I'm still a little hungry.
We're back, finally. We had some trouble with a food service that was rather unreliable so we didn't both reviewing any of the food. We're on a new meal service--Mosaic--which offers fresh vegetarian and vegan food you microwave. Let's dive into our first dishes!
Since the portions are individual, we may try both or only try one depending on previously established preferences (e.g. Nick hates pesto).
Hmmm. Well, the butternut is good, the pasta is good, the walnuts that were in here for some reason was fine, the sage... was not great. Once I stirred this together everything was coated in minced sage. It's hard to really enjoy pasta or butternut squash when all you can taste is thick sage coating. I don't think I would get this one again, or maybe perform an emergency sage-ectomy before mixing it all up. A more accurate title would be SAGE covering butternut squash and pasta.
Katie breaking in: I tried Nick's butternut dish. My first bite must not have had the sage overload on it because I thought it was good, reminiscent of Evol's Butternut Squash ravioli if you've had that. Unfortunately, my bites after Nick was done and it was all mixed were not as good. I found myself hunting for butternut squash pieces without green or cavatappi without green. With the green, it was just...yuck. If the dish had toned way down on the sage, it would have been quite good.
Off-topic but Panera used to have a butternut squash ravioli dish in the fall that I absolutely loved. They killed it though when they went on that "clean" food thing...kinda ruined the taste of most of their dishes, I think. I still like a couple things but it's not at all hard to decide what I want anymore.
The only thing I did not enjoy was this green stuff. I think it was the broccoli rabe because spinach is usually fine once it's been wilted down and cooked. It was all planty, not at all pleasant. However, the rest of the dish was great! The tomatoes were amazingly flavorful. I enjoyed spearing a cavatappi curl with a tomato piece that had the exact right amount of creamy pesto sauce drizzle on it. I would definitely, definitely eat this again.
Freshly provides a menu of relatively freshly prepared microwaveable dinners. We were very excited to try our first meal, picking the meal we thought we'd like the most to go first.
Post-meal thoughts:
Nick:
What the heck is this? This is not savory sweet. Why, I don't detect even a hint of teriyaki! I'm afraid Freshly stumbled right out of the gate; this just tasted like rice and chicken. There may have been a single atom of savory-sweet teriyaki somewhere in the universe of this dish, but it never came across my tongue. What a letdown. Katie asked if we like missed a sauce packet you were supposed to stir in or something, and that's a reasonable question, because this had absolutely zero taste. I hope we haven't made a terrible mistake.
Katie:
At first, I thought it was good. I must have gotten a few bites with the one splash of teriyaki either of our dishes got. There wasn't much flavor but I could taste something. But then. I ate more. And a little more. Suddenly, all I was tasting was rice with broccoli. The chicken, which I actually thought was quite tender and enjoyed for once, betrayed me with one of those gross pieces where something is popping and resisting in your mouth. What. The. Fuck. This is why I can't stand more than a few bites of meat before feeling like I want to barf. I know McDonald's gets a lot of shit for McNuggets and burgers but at least I can eat them without shit popping in my mouth.
I'm wondering if the pasta dishes I got for the rest of the week will be good. Perhaps it's just these chicken bowls that are going to be bad.
Katie:
I had to work late for a meeting so missed half the prep again. The prep I was there for was very easy as we skipped the mushrooms. We tried the prosciutto to see if we wanted it on our pasta. I've always liked it in small doses but the squishy texture was not right for the dish, at least for us.
Nick:
Easy - boil the pasta, make the sauce, combine and stir. The unusual step was frying panko breadcrumbs in butter, which I've never done before, and smelled absolutely delicious. Man, why aren't I frying more stuff in butter? You know, I wonder if I could make popcorn like that, melt the butter in a pan, pour on the kernels... nobody tell my doctor what I'm about to do.
Post-meal thoughts
Katie:
Nick:
Good! As Katie noted, we skipped the mushrooms and prosciutto, the mushrooms because ew, and the big P because of a texture concern; when I'm going to town on a nice bowl of pasta I don't necessarily want to get a mouthful of prosciutto. That's just weird. This resulted in the dish feeling like I didn't really get enough to eat, but what we did get was absolutely delicious. Per Katie, the sauce was a bit basic; what really elevated the dish was the breadcrumbs, which tasted amazing. It's like having the garlic bread right on the pasta! I don't know if I would specifically get this again, but I might just start butter frying panko breadcrumbs whenever it's pasta time from now on.
Katie:
I missed a good portion of the cooking due to work. I mainly just tested the farro to see if it was done and mixed things in at the end. Nick did a great job handling the bulk of the prep and cooking!
Nick:
Pretty easy; most of the cook time was waiting for the farro to cook and the chickpeas to roast in the oven. There was a step this time I've never done before where after the chickpeas got rinsed, they were put between two layers of paper towels, vigorously rubbed, and the chickpea, uh, outer skin layer had to be manually picked off. That was a little annoying. Otherwise, mostly reading Reddit while the chickpeas roast. None of them exploded this time at least!
Post-meal thoughts
Katie:
I thought this was pretty decent. The last time we had a Mediterranean dish, we weren't fans. I don't always like feta, I'd was skeptical of the roasted chickpeas too. The chickpeas turned out to be my favorite element in the dish. I enjoyed coming across some crunchy goodness between treasure hunts for a pepper slice or tomato half. The farro seems to be there mainly to fill out the dish rather than add any real flavoring. I'd select this again if it comes up in the meal rotation but I wouldn't go out of my way to order it in a restaurant.
Nick:
Not bad! I was a little disappointed that after carefully cooking and seasoning the farro, veggies, and chickpeas, the end taste of the product was the huge amount of tzatziki sauce we were directed to dump on the dish at the end. Just unloading two barrels of tzatziki all over the place. The best bite was when you got a squishy but flavorful half baby tomato, crunchy yellow pepper piece, nice and charred salty chickpea, and also there farro (as Katie pointed out, it mostly seems to be there to fill out the dish). Like Katie, I think I would probably make this again, but I didn't love it enough so that I wanted more when I was done. Perfectly acceptable. Also, we skipped the zucchini, because barf. To improve this dish, I would add another bell pepper (eating one in every bite, I still ran out before the end) and maybe roast the veggies a little bit; I think throwing them on the baking sheet for a few minutes with a little salt and olive oil on them would make them taste even better. Although then the peppers wouldn't be as crunchy. I have to end this review now, my cat woke up and wants me to pet him.
Nick:
Not too tough, but a bit unusual; we made the pasta in a pot, made the sauce in a sauce pan, then poured the cooked pasta into the sauce pan, cooked it a little more and spooned it into the bowls we were going to eat out of. Also, this is the first time I'm eating a caper. We left out the broccoli, because who puts frickin' broccoli in a pasta dish? Clearly wrong. Sick and wrong. Sick, sad and wrong.
Katie:
I don't mind broccoli in a stir fry or something savory but it's wrong in pasta. The tiny trees do not go well with pasta sauce at all. Anyway, prep. It was pretty straight forward. We have started tasting the optional spicy ingredients to see how spice we want our sauce (spoilers: not very spice).
Nick:
Very good! This is another dish that has you spice to taste, and with just a tiny bit of chili paste in it, this packed a bit of a kick (probably also because of all the garlic). However, the milk and butter kept it under control, and the milk, butter, garlic and roasted red pepper all worked great together. The only thing I didn't like was the capers, which tasted VERY strong; I ended up picking mine out after biting into one and getting a salt caper explosion in my mouth I did not enjoy. I'm not going to complain about not getting enough food since we deep-sixed the broccoli, so I'll just say I would happily have eaten twice as much as this. If every box meal turned out this well I'd be very pleased. Nice job, Blue Apron, you can continue existing.
Katie:
I had the ricotta mixture on mine since Nick wasn't a fan and that cut down on the spice for me. I thought this was great! I'd been looking forward to having this dish all week and was not disappointed. As Nick said, I could have happily eaten twice as much. The pasta choice was perfect, the shells held the more liquid than solid sauce instead and ensured each bite packed the red pepper flavor. I found myself eating as slow as I could to savor it and spend as much time enjoying it as I possibly could. I really hope this comes up in the rotation again.
I don't know how many of you are familiar with how these meal boxes work. The two we've tried work like this:
Nick:
This took almost an hour to cook, and there was a lot to do; the last time we had tofu we just drained it and cut it, but this time it had to be pressed under a heavy pot between two layers of paper towels for ten minutes. While that we as going on we had to cook the rice, prep the veggies, make the sauce, cook the tofu, put it in a bowl, cook the veggies, add the sauce, mix with the tofu in the bowl, plate the rice, plate the tofu and veggies, and add the garnish. Whew!! We skipped the peas, because they're nasty, and most of the hot sauce, because it was REAL hot and we're little babies.
Katie:
I was very proud of my skills in chopping the tofu into bite-sized cubes. I'm not sure why this took so long to cook, to be honest. It didn't feel like there were necessarily more steps than other dishes at all. We did take a break while we were pressing the tofu to play Pokémon Snap though. I got a great picture of Pichu!
Nick:
The sauce we made for this was absolutely delicious; as my dad would say, you could eat an old boot with enough of that sauce on it. The rice, carrots and stallions were delicious. The tofu was also there. Okay, I'm kidding; I'm not really a tofu fan, and the sauce made the tofu taste great, but I still wasn't in love with the texture. I think I would have liked this more if it was tofu-less; the sauce is the real star of the dish, and the sauce on, let's say, rice, carrots, scallions, water chestnuts and some red bell peppers would be delicious. The sauce saved it, but tolerating tofu is about as much as I can claim to like the stuff, and I don't know that I want any more dishes with it in there; unless the sauce is this good, and I would be shocked if that is possible, I just don't like it very much.
Katie:
I think this is one of the top 3 things we've gotten from the meal box delivery places so far! My only critique is that I would have liked more sauce. We cooked the tofu well enough so it was good and done, not squishy at all. Some of the carrots were that kind of blackened where it just makes it more sweet. Combine that with the sauce and it was perfection! I would absolutely get this again!
Katie:
I missed about half the prep this time as a work meeting went beyond my EOD. Nick heroically started cooking and prepping without me. He also bravely did all the meat-touching. Our first time cooking beef with both of us inquiring of the other "are we doing this right" every other minute. I'm going to let Nick go more in depth since he did much more of the lift today.
Nick:
Not too tough - season the beef, cook it in a pan, warm the pitas, make garlic labneh (put labneh in a bowl and add garlic), spread labneh on the pita, add beef, done. Just to look at the finished product, I was like, that is a lot of beef. I started getting worried - not as worried as last time after trying that nasty pesto shit they tried to poison us with - that this was going to be way too much beef. I have a bad feeling about this.
Post-meal thoughts
Too much beef. The pita is good, the garlic labneh is good, the seasoning on the beef is good, but even at half as much beef this would probably be too much beef. Just a ton of beef. This is like four or five burger's worth of beef in the pita. Maybe if it was like fried and crunchy. The taste was good, but the texture of all that beef... I guess we're not just big meat people. Another swing and a miss. You're on real thin ice now, Blue Apron! Don't mess these next two up!
Katie:
I wholeheartedly agree--too much beef but the pita, labneh, and zatar were all good. If there had been just a fraction of the beef in smaller chunks, maybe I would have actually finished it rather than took a few bites before making a face. To be fair, I can't even finish a whole burger most of the time as I'll get about halfway through being my meat meter is full and my sim makes a scronchy unhappy face in the status screen. What I'm saying is, I'm not the most unbiased source when it comes to meat, especially beef. Maybe I've even said this 7 times already and you're sick of hearing it! To fix this, I would have given us far less beef and made my mom come over to cook it for me.
Food Prep and Cooking
Nick:
This seemed simple enough; roast veggies, make couscous in a pot, make lemon labneh, combine. BTW, here's the super secret way to make lemon labneh:
1. Open labneh container.
2. Put labneh in a bowl.
3. Squirt lemon on top.
However, as we were wrapping up I started getting a really bad feeling. The third to last step was mixing salsa verde into the couscous, and I tried a little bit. I don't know what I thought salsa verde is, but this tasted 100% like pesto. Realizing I had just mixed what tasted like lawn waste into the couscous, I started getting a sinking feeling that this was gonna be real bad.
Katie:
I had never seen or heard of kohlrabi before. It looked like a squished green onion with tentacles coming out of it. The instructions said to peel it. I couldn't figure out how to do that so I just started cutting off big pieces of the outside with a knife. The inside looked like a melony potato.
I swear the last time I had salsa verde with something...it was just weird tasting green salsa. Not pesto liquid. Is there more than one??
Nick:
This was real bad. Actually, saying it was real bad seems like an understatement; I think this is the first thing we've made that was completely inedible. When you think of a shawarma-spiced vegetable & couscous bowl, what flavors do you think of? Shawarma? Maybe the nice earthy taste of roasted carrots and kohlrabi? The lemon mixed into the labneh and squired over the top of the finished dish? Well, none of these flavors are present; they have been obliterated by the nuclear explosion of pesto. This tastes like sitting down to eat a nice big bowl of bitter grass. Why is there pesto in this? What does pesto have to do with shawarma or roasted veggies or couscous? I took one bite, regretted the life decisions that had lead me to this point, and fed it right to the garbage disposal. You're on thin ice, Blue Apron. Absolutely disgusting. I wouldn't feed this to a pig I hated. Without any hyperbole, absolutely the most disgusting thing we've made with any of these meal services. Barf.
Katie:
Pesto is fine for pasta sometimes. I was not expecting pesto on my couscous. I think this would have been a hit if we'd just left the salsa verde off or had another sauce with this. We're going to have to be careful in our meal selection next time. Yuck for the pesto sauce. The roasted veggies and the labneh were really good though. It was just hard to taste them around the bad sauce.
Nick makes me veggie fajitas every Saturday (peppers and onions, no meat). I had been using Pace's Serrano Pineapple salsa, but that seems to have been discontinued. I thought it would be fun to try several different salsas with my Mom (Susan), brother (Mike), and the two of us. We only took one picture of the taco bowls we made at the end with the winning salsa(s) since pictures of 10 jars of salsa wouldn't have been interesting.
All ratings are out of 5.
Los Panchos Restaurant Salsa
Susan - 4, Mike - 5, Katie - 4.5, Nick - 4.5
Nick:
Well, not to spoil this whole post, but I would be shocked if this wasn't the best stuff; this is authentic salsa from a local Mexican restaurant. And it's great! This is exactly what I think of when I think of salsa. It's the Platonic salsa that exists in the world of forms or whatever it is. I did 4.5 in case one of the other ones really blew me away and redefined my understanding of salsa, which you'll have to read on to see if that happened.
Katie:
I think Nick said it best. This was good and exactly what I think of when I think of salsa.
Indian Ladder Apple Salsa
Susan - 4.5, Mike - 4.5, Katie - 5, Nick - 4.5
Katie:
My old favorite! Before the pandemic, we would drive out to Indian Ladder farms and stock up on this literal boxes at a time. I would carefully ration out my apple salsa over the winter when the farm wouldn't be open to get more. I think we stopped getting it mainly because of the pandemic and the farm not always having some in stock. It is on the sweet side but I still really enjoyed it.
Nick:
WHOOH, this was sweet! Between the extreme sweetness and maximum chunkosity, this was more like jam than salsa. Tasted good on a salty chip, but I don't know if this would really fit well in some spots where you would use traditional salsa.
Los Panchos Queso
Susan - 4.5, Mike - 4, Katie - 4, Nick - N/A
Nick:
I had to do N/A on this one as I can't eat cheese without turning into a weapon of mass destruction. Tasted good, but I only had a tiny bit. Nice and creamy. I bet this would cut down spice nicely.
Katie:
I thought this was good. It wasn't too thicky or overly favoring one type of cheese. You know the kind, where it might as well be just melted cheddar instead of a melty saucey cheese blendy thing.
Mrs. Renfro's Craft Beer Salsa
Susan - 0, Mike - 2, Katie - 0, Nick - 0
Katie:
At first, I was like "oh this is fine" but then the beer kicked in and I was like "yuck!". I have never liked beer. It tastes like what pee smells like to me. Sorry, beer fans.
Nick:
Oh NOOOOOOOO. Mrs. Renfro, what are you doing?! Is this what beer tastes like? This didn't taste like salsa it all; it tasted like kind of sour dirt. This may be one of the most disgusting tastes I have ever experienced. This doesn't even deserve the name salsa. Mrs. Renfro's Disgraced Butt Dirt Tasting Product For Bad People. Richly earned zeroes!
Mrs. Renfro's Blackberry Serrano
Susan - 1, Mike - 2.5, Katie - 2.5, Nick - 2.5
Nick:
After that nasty last one, I was very worried Mrs. Renfro was going to kill us with this follow-up salsa. It's actually not bad, but it's very odd. When you eat salsa, are you looking for a spicy blueberry taste? I'm not, and my mouth was super confused eating this. I think this might be delicious as, like, a very lightly applied sauce on top of a sweet cake or something. As salsa, I'm really struggling to think when and where you would want this.
Katie:
You know, this was actually kind of good but when would you use it? I suppose some adventurous and creative home-chef could use it for a breakfast twist of some kind. It definitely wouldn't belong on a dinner food due to how sweet it was. Still, if you ever want a really sweet salsa for something...you could pick this up.
Susan - N/A, Mike - 0.5, Katie - 0, Nick -1
Katie:
I think we had a review where we discussed smokiness having infused flavor versus tasting like a campfire in a can. This was the latter. It was salsa with smoke on top of it. Not good, my friends.
Nick:
Ouch, look at those scores! We all hated this because it was packed with fake smoke flavor. Just tasted like eatin' a campfire. I like smoke flavor, and as you can see from my one being the highest score for this, we all basically agreed this was trash that belongs in the garbage. I don't know that I'm looking for a smoky taste in salsa to begin with, but if I was, this is definitely not to pull it off.
Susan - 1, Mike - 3, Katie - 1.5, Nick - 0.5
Nick:
WHOOH boy, this was nasty AF. I actually liked this less than the fake smoke flavor; I don't know if it was the mango or the peach, but this had an absolutely disgusting fake fruit flavor that I could not stand. Absolutely terrible.
Katie:
I don't think the mango was good in this. I think the peach might have been okay but the mango threw things off. I think I've liked mango in other places just not here. Boo.
Susan - 3, Mike - 4, Katie - 4, Nick - 4
Katie:
This was good! If we hadn't had the salsa from Los Panchos, this might have won. I think Los Panchos had something to it that set it apart though. Don't ask me what it was...perhaps the secret ingredient was the friendship we'd made along the way.
Nick:
Very good! I think this is as good as you're going to get in a jar of salsa you get from the supermarket. Like the Los Panchos Restaurant stuff, this is exactly what I think of when I envision salsa, and the fact that it can almost match up to fresh, locally made salsa is pretty impressive for a jarred product. This is probably what I'd be reaching for if I don't feel like going to Los Panchos.
Susan - 3.5, Mike - 4, Katie - 3, Nick - 0
Nick:
Maybe it was the peach I didn't like up there in the Desert Pepper Peach Mango, because this was nasty. I think I just hate peach taste; everyone else seemed to like this quite a bit, so my guess is there's nothing wrong with this, I just can't stand the peach taste. Eugh.
Katie:
I knew the peach would be fine on its own! This is going on my last of back-up flavors along with the pineapple version I'd already liked. Funnily enough, I don't much care for the non-fruit flavors of Newman's Own. Go Figure.
BONUS: Nature's Promise Red Pepper Hummus
Susan - N/A, Mike - 4, Katie - 3.5, Nick - 3
I liked this a lot. It was very smooth, not at all gritty like some hummus can be.
Nick:
"Nature's Promise: When They're Out Of Sabra™"
We all decided that Los Panchos and the apple salsa were the winners. My mom had the idea of mixing the two together, which was genius and flipping delicious. In the time since the taste test, I had an impromptu fajita night and had a live pilot of the two flavors together. I ain't never going back! It was awesome!
Nick:
Pretty easy - we made the rustic-style (read: chunky af) sauce in a sauté pan on one burner while boiling water and cooking the noodles in it on the right. My only complaint is that the noodles were corded up in a way that made it difficult to untangle them, and as a result despite our best stirring, the finished product had some of them stuck together two or three thick. Otherwise, no sweat.
Katie:
This is our first Blue Apron recipe! When we were choosing what recipes to try on their site, they helpfully added a tip on what cooking utensils to have on hand for the meal prep. Nothing too crazy, of course. We were even supplied with butter and red pepper flakes! I'm impressed. The old box assumed you had certain things on hand. The instructions are a little more in depth as well. The old box certainly told you what to do but I felt Blue Apron did a bit of a better job explaining things for this first recipe.
Nick:
Hmmm.... pretty good! I was a bit worried this sauce was going to be ULTRA CHUNK when we poured the canned yellow tomatoes out into a bowl, but I think they cooked down pretty well. The big blat of butter and cream we added made the sauce taste really good, and I'm normally not a creamy sauce person. I think I would get this again, although I wonder if just having a jar of nice cream sauce is less work. My only complaint is the zucchini, which doesn't really work here; if I'm eating a nice, garlicy, creamy noodle, I don't really want to have a zucchini piece in there I have to stop and chew for a while. To improve this dish, I would - you guessed it - axe the zucchini, which is quickly becoming as feared and ingredient to me as kale, green peas or mushrooms. Off to a good start with Blue Apron! (Typed "Blue Apron" like six times)
Katie:
I was initially worried about the level of chunkiness in the sauce. Nick is notoriously anti-chunk. Any dish with too different mouth textures included (soup that has too big chunks you need to chew, for example) sets off his Nick alarm during which we are all subjected to, at length, how there was "too much chewing" and "I don't want to chew for 30 minutes on one bite". I can sympathize since I don't like meat you have to chew more than a few bites and whatnot so it's not like I'm not a weirdo too. And you've read all my reviews where I'm all "I don't like gummy food" or whatever. I can already sense Nick coming up with a rebuttal from his side of the couch.
Back to the food! I thought this was very good and would definitely get it again. The creamy sauce didn't taste like hot milk but instead carried the flavors of the garlic, red peppers, and others with it. I never felt I was missing anything from one bite to the next either. Everything was well blended and complemented each other. There was no weird kale bits crapping up the joint either! I agree with Nick on the zucchini, let's axe it for next time. It's, at best, just there without a flavor of its own to contribute.
Nick PS: In my defense, as Katie noted, she doesn't love chewy food either. Which one of us hates gum so much every time they pass someone chewing it yells "Look at this dumb cow chewing their cud!!!" at the closed car window? I rest my case.
Katie PPS: Mostly just when it's with the mouth open and there's that loud wet mouth sound.
Katie:
The prep was pretty simple. Chop and pot, really. We needed butter, which we wouldn't normally have in the fridge if Nick hadn't started making popcorn again. Some of the peppers had been a little too wet when packaged and had a few slimy parts that I had to cut off.
Nick:
Easiest prep yet - throw stuff in a pot and cook it. Even that gave us some trouble, though; I've given up on figuring out what simmering something is. I thought I knew, but we always end up with too much liquid, and guess what? We ended up with too much liquid after simmering this for ten minutes. Also, this is our last Green Chef bag! We're switching because Blue Apron lets you do just two meals a week, and also if I get one more bag with cremini mushrooms, green peas, or kale I am going to scream. Fuck off, kale! You're not wanted here! Go back to Hell!
Post-meal thoughts
Katie:
Well, it was fine. I thought I'd broken up the impossible meat into small enough chunks or the chunks that were left would like...melt or something? It was still okay but I think it needed that mushroom concentrate from the tacos a while back. I was super worried about the giant kidney beans, so much so I made us try a little spoonful before we plated to ensure we weren't making a terrible mistake.
As Nick mentioned in Prep, we had a lot of liquid. And it was fine, I guess. Like I ate my dinner but this isn't something I'd order on purpose, at least not if it turns out the same. We're building our ability to cook, at least.
Nick:
Before cooking this, I was worried about the big-ass beans and hopeful that the fake meat would be as delicious as it was back when we made the tacos. As it turned out, the beans, despite both of us worrying about them ("What about the BEANS" Katie shrieked), were fine; they were nice and cooked so I barely even noticed them. Unfortunately, the fake meat was not good, friends. It was missing whatever in the tacos made it super savory. Bring back the mushroom stock! I think it was almost too real; like Katie said, we had trouble breaking it up, despite both of us taking turns with the flipper trying to mash it into bite-sized chunks, and a bite of, umm, I guess this is chili with too much fake meat in it was not very pleasant. I think I feel the same way Katie does; it's fine, but not something I'm running out to order more of. To improve this dish, I would add the mushroom stock!! Where is my mushroom stock?? Where is it? Who has my mushroom stock? I'm after that mushroom stock like Sauron after the One Ring. Which one of you hairy-footed little thieves has it?!
Nick:
We've never made chili before (okay, I've never made chili before; maybe Katie chili-cheated on me), but this is basically what I would expect: Heat oil, add chopped onions, cook, add corn, tomatoes, squash, keep cooking, add water, spicy tomato sauce and vegetable stock, simmer. We also added toasted sliced tortilla shells, which didn't look anything like the little photo on the recipe card.
Katie:
In the Before Times, work used to have a chili cook-off every year. My only knowledge of chili was the kind with lots of beef and beans. I never tried that kind. I did try some sample cups of the work chili which was more varied--chicken fajita chili and I think even an Italian Wedding soup-inspired one--than just the beef-bean kind. Even still, I never had anywhere close to a bowl of chili before. I suppose the prep was about what I expected...seemed easy enough. We still don't have the "salt and pepper to taste" part down as we don't know what anything is supposed to taste like.
Oh I remembered that the beans smelled super bad when we opened the box. Like "should we even include this" funky.
Post-meal thoughts
Hmmm... is this chili? This tasted like vegetable soup. I mean, it's not bad at all, but if you blindfolded me and I took a bite of this, I'm going to say hearty vegetable stew. Chili should be like... thicker? Spicier? It's not soupy, right? I'm very puzzled by this. The tortilla strips were good, but once again I feel like whoever wrote out the recipe should have had us chop an ingredient smaller so it was bite-sized; a six inch long toasted tortilla strip is too much to eat in one bite. It tasted pretty good with the beans, corn, tomato and a tortilla strip all in one bite, but is it chili? I'm going to say no. To improve this dish, I would - you guessed it - order Burger King delivery. Just kidding, I'd make the tortilla strips bite sized. (Although that Burger King does sound pretty good. I think I need more meat in my diet...)
Katie:
I would like to echo Nick's question--is this chili? What is chili? Is it just soup with a bunch of stuff in it? An advanced stew?
I thought this was good but needed more taste. I would have loved some of that plant-based protein and mushroom concentrate from those tacos a few weeks back to add some meaty flavor. There needed to be more flavor, for sure. I even enjoyed the beans, except when I looked at them. If I looked at the spoon, I felt revulsion and didn't want to put it in my mouth. If I paid attention to Midsomer Murders instead, the texture of the beans was indistinguishable from the corn. I'm still not ready to hop on the train to Beanburg and accept beans on all the things, but I'm more at ease with them being included.
Katie:
The food prep was simple and quick this time. We did skip the mushrooms and edamame so there's some time saved there. I had fun grating the carrot, something I haven't done since I was a kid. Although, I remember grating a lot of cheese. I don't remember why but we bought cheddar cheese in this big long block and grated it ourselves. Did they not sell grated cheese in the late 80s? Or was it just for fancy people? I don't even think you can buy blocks of cheese like that now, can you?
Nick:
Sure you can! Next time we actually go to the supermarket (like CHUMPS) I'll get you a $600 wheel of that parmesan cheese you like. Just make sure you eat it all before it goes stale! Ha ha!
As for the prep, like Katie said, very simple - I think this was the easiest one we've ever done. Boil up some noodles, cook some peppers in a pan, combine, add sauce, plate, and put a ton of shredded carrot on top. I think it would have been more complicated if we hadn't skipped the mushrooms, but I hate the texture of mushrooms. Fuck mushrooms. All my homies hate mushrooms. #killallmushrooms
Post-meal thoughts
Oh my gosh, my friends. I want 3 or 4 more bowls of this. We weren't halfway through before we started talking about making this ourselves (and also if we wanted to have yogurt because we were still hungry). This is the first time we are going to keep the recipe and attempt to make a version on our own. The sauce was delicious, the peppers were in that sweet spot of being a bit burnt and sweetish, and the carrots added a yummy texture to the dish. In all serious, I want way more of this than we got. I'm guessing the bowl would have been more full with the stuff we left off.
Nick:
I know it seems kind of silly to throw a bunch of ingredients away and then complain that the finished dish doesn't give you enough to eat, but, uh, here we are. You could easily stand to double the noodles on this bad boy and I think it would still be great. What we did get was excellent; as Katie said the peppers were done just the right amount, and the noodles, sauce and carrots all combined wonderfully. The only problem is that I wanted more, and not just I wanted more as in it was great and I want to eat more, but I wanted more as in it wasn't enough to fill me up and I'm going to have to go eat something else. Double the noodles in this and I think you have a sure fire hit. As it is, it tastes great, but this is more like an appetizer than a meal that's going to fill you all the way up.
Nick:
Little more hectic than usual, but not too bad; cook the penne, reduce the vinegar (which apparently just means simmer for 4-5 minutes?), combine it all in a big sauté pan with the tomato, squash, and pesto dressing. This is the first time I think we've ever actually used the back burner (to create the reduction), but nothing super exciting.
Katie:
I thought a reduction would be more complicated. Maybe we had the most basic form or something. The steps fell inline nicely, a big improvement over the last time. The whole prep was fairly easy and straightforward. Not much to comment on here other than it all went smoothly.
Post-meal Thoughts
Nick:
As for the big problem... that pesto. This tasted like going outside and eating the lawn. Why does it taste like grass??? Apparently I have the doesn't like pesto gene, and it's very powerful in my family. Just like the Force, except instead of giving me awesome super powers I can't eat this penne dish. I took one bite of tomato and went "oh no", one bite of squash and went "oh NO" and then one bite of penne and yelled "OH NO!" and ran into the kitchen to microwave some Spaghettios. Just awful. Truly terrible. I hated everything about this. No sir, I did not like this. Mm-mm, nope. No.
Katie:
I have the complete opposite reaction as Nick. I really enjoyed this. I thought the balsamic reduction added a great element to the dish. Any time I found a tomato piece, I was quite pleased. I wasn't too keen on how big the squash pieces were (at the best of times, I think squash is fine enough but these pieces were way too big) and found myself digging them out to devour first so I could enjoy the penne, tomato, and little bits of roasted red pepper in peace.
We actually got a decent amount of penne too. Usually, you get maybe a mouthful or two of pasta in frozen meals and any pre-prepped stuff. I was delighted to see how filling the meal would be. I did eat Nick's half so I'm extra full but I think even with just my original, I would have been satisfied.
As a small bit of housekeeping, we are switching meal box subs. We have this week and one more with Green Chef then we're trying Blue Apron. Looking forward to seeing how we fare!
Katie:
With most of the Green Chef meals we've tried so far, the prep proceeds with each step falling neatly in line with the next. We have perhaps had a few extra minutes here and there but things are usually quite on time. For this recipe, we were stuck waiting on the roasted sweet potatoes and peppers for over 10 minutes with everything else being already completed.
Nick:
I think the problem here is the quinoa going 14-16 minutes against the roast veggies going 20-22; on top of that the quinoa finished a few minutes early, so we just sat around for a while and then went to watch Father Brown. Nothing too exciting here, though; cook quinoa, roast veggies, make "colelsaw" (cabbage and mango with dressing on top), combine. We'll come back to that "combine" later. (ominous music)
Post-meal thoughts
Katie:
I think we would have liked this much better in two separate bowls or on two halves of a plate.
Nick:
Hooh boy, I did not like this. I think the problem with this dish comes down to one instruction: "Top with the slaw." On their own, the quinoa is fine, the roasted veggies are great, and the - I guess I'm going to call it slaw - are good. Mixed together, though... there's some kind of unpleasant sour flavor produced when it's all mixed up that I really didn't like. If I got a bite with enough roasted veggies to overpower this, it was absolutely delicious, but that was not easy to do. Katie was guessing it was the agave dressing from the coleslaw; I don't know enough to say for sure, but I think that's right. Having the slaw in a separate bowl I think would have made this quite good - one or two bites of mixed up quinoa and veggies, a palette-cleanser bite of the, umm, "slaw". All mixed up, though... this had a date with the garbage disposal pretty quick. Well, now we know for next time, AndKnowingIsHalftheBattleGIJoeAmericanHereo etc.
Nick:
Nothing too surprising - cook the farro in a pot, cut up the carrots, roast 'em in the oven. The biggest problem we had was, as always, with the kale; the instructions have you put oil, salad dressing and salt and pepper on it, then like massage it? How am I supposed to do that? I'm not touching it with my bare hands after pouring all that stuff on, right? The instructions act like everyone learns how to massage kale in school. What do you want from me, Green Chef???
Katie:
I echo Nick's sentiments, especially regarding the kale. Shouldn't we be massaging it before dumping all the gunk on it?
On a positive note, the sealant did not fail on our powder packet of seasoning this time. We got the full pouch.
Post-meal Thoughts
Nick:
Katie:
There are some problems with this dish. First, the kale. Kale tastes like bitter leaves to me. It takes a lot of flavoring to mask the bitterness. I thought there was a dish we had that smothered the kale enough so it wasn't bad but I can't remember. We were instructed to dump only a tablespoon of the green goddess dressing on the kale, saving the rest "for taste" at the end. Big mistake. Kale needs a lot of help to not be a bitter, depressed mangle of leaves, still angry at its ex over that divorce 10 years ago. She's moved on, Kale. Stop being bitter and move on with your life.
Second problem; the farro. I know Nick said he liked it. It was fine. There was some good smokiness to the flavoring powder but not underlying flavoring to elevate it beyond just being smoky. There was no hint of the wood smoked...just the smoke like it was off any old backyard summer bonfire.
Third problem; the carrots. As the item I liked the most, it still wasn't that good. Maybe they needed to be cooked longer, they definitely needed to be smaller, and they never developed a good caramelization glaze. They were cooked carrots tasting of maple rather than maple-glazed carrots.
Copying Nick's bit, I'm going to suggest how to improve this dish. First, make the kale its own bowl if you are hellbent on keeping it. Throw all the green goddess at it along with something else to flavor and texture it. Second, keep the tomatoes in with the farro only roast them. I don't know if you can maple-glaze tomatoes but why not? Third, provide more direction on what 'lightly oil' means. If getting a maple glaze on your carrots is important, direct your readers further on how to accomplish it. I have a feeling our 'lightly oil' was not the same amount of oil as the recipe author's.
Perhaps Green Chef needs different cooking levelled recipes. Beginners get the version with everything explained (medium-low heat to lightly oil are spelled out in actual measurements) while more advanced home cooks can get the more vague directions.
This part of our Disney trip included my Mom who surprised us on the trip. We were genuinely surprised and it was awesome. For today's entry, we'll be covering some of the food we tried during the Festival of the Arts at Epcot.
Rating--Katie and Mom gave this a 5. Nick didn't try much because he's lactose intolerant and we didn't have any pills.
I remember this being absolutely amazing. The brie, which I'd only ever had cold in wedge form before, was creamy and so so good. The bread was the delivery mechanism for the cheese. I would happily have this as an appetizer anytime, anywhere.
Nick:
I tried a tiny little lick because if I had any more I would have been transformed into a fearsome biological weapon destroying the World Showcase with mega lactose farts. Everyone would have been like "Oh my god, did a sewer break? The smell seems to be coming from that extremely handsome and charming man!". Anyway, from the tiny little lick I had, this seemed good; almost like very high end cheese you would get on a $25, too big to finish Druther's mac and cheese.
Rating--Mom 2, Nick 2.5, Katie 3.5
Nick:
Hmmm. These are a little hard to judge because the different flavors were very different. One of them was like lemon or something? and it was horrible, which gets a zero; one was red and green and tasted like, ummmmm, cookie, which was fine and a 2.5; and one was like coffee or something and I only got one little bite because it was so good it went very quick. Add those all together and you get a 2.5!
Katie:
The coffee one was by far the favorite. One of them I remember being terrible and one was fine, if odd. I think we got another sleeve of these (they came in a little plastic bespoke container) just so more of us could try the coffee one. My 3.5 score was to account for the ones we didn't like.
Katie:
I only recently tried marzipan. I had been warned for years about how it was not well liked by most people and was an acquired taste. When I finally tried it, it was pretty good. The almond taste was strong enough to be felt but not so strong that I wanted to never hear the word almond again.
My past experience with dark chocolate is less positive. Over a certain percentage over pure cacao and I can't take the bitter taste. Up to a certain point, the bitterness can be quite pleasant, especially if the chocolate is mixed with another flavor like orange.
I am actually going to pause my thoughts on the dark chocolate marzipan to have another bite. I need to more fully formulate my thoughts in light of my recent introspection.
Okay, I'm back after having a little more. Overall, I like it. I believe I have said before that I can only handle eating so much of any chocolate at any given time so the small amount I had was enough for me for quite some time. That being said, I thought this was good. The kind of good where if a friend or relative has some and asks if you want some, you'll say "sure, I like that!" and enjoy it. It's not something I'd buy to just eat on my own or split with Nick. This is more to do with me not really being into chocolate rather than this being bad. If you like dark chocolate and you like marzipan, try this out for something different. It comes in squares so you can easily share with friends or dole it out to yourself bit by bit over time.
Hmmmm.... kind of a mixed bag here I think. The dark chocolate is good, the marzipan is good, and they actually go together very well taste wise; the chocolate really covers up the sometimes unpleasantly strong almond flavor that marzipan usually has (especially the aftertaste). In that regard, I think this is better than eating marzipan straight. The texture though..... hmm. Both Katie and I don't really like chocolate with differently-textured stuff inside it; I'll eat mint or orange or whatever flavored dark chocolate all day, but that's when the chocolate itself is flavored; when it's around something, that's when I start making a face like a cat who just tried to eat a bread twist tie he found on the ground. I think that's where this falls down a little bit; the texture of the hard, brittle chocolate and the thick, gritty marzipan don't quiiiiiiite work out. I think this would have been better as dark chocolate with the marzipan mixed directly into the chocolate (and it's not like marzipan isn't a strong enough taste for you to notice it's there). Overall, not bad, but I think I'd rather just eat some nice dark chocolate.
PS: 60% is my line - once you go over that, you're on very risky ground with dark chocolate. Give me that 60% Lindt. No, seriously, give me some. Do you have any? Give it to me!
Nick:
Little bit hectic this time; farro goes in a pot to boil for 30 minutes, sweet potatoes go in the oven to get roasted for 22 minutes, throw the pepper in a pan, cook it, add onion and garlic and collard greens, go to the bathroom and play Pop Town, take the sweet potatoes out, coat them in maple mustard sauce, back into the oven, the farro's done, strain it and return it to the pot, cover it with BBQ spice, stir, plate, then the veggies, then the sweet potato on top. Whew!!
Katie:
Another cooking first for me; wilting something. The collard greens needed wilting in the veggie mixture and I think I pulled it off pretty well. It certainly was not the overly stiff kale we had in previous dishes. There wasn't as much for both of us to do the entire time. While the farro and sweet potatoes were baking, we finished the other stuff with time left to have to actually have a conversation. I kid. We talk literally all day and night, it's kind of impossible for us to get sick of each other's company. Unless Nick knows something I don't.
Post-meal thoughts
Nick:
Hmm, not quite what I expected. This is supposed to be BBQ, maple, and mustard flavored; despite dumping half the BBQ spice over the farro and the other half over the veggies, this only tastes like the maple syrup. Both the BBQ and mustard flavors are almost completely smothered; any bite with maple-coated sweet potato - and that's basically all of them - just tastes like, well, maple-coated sweet potato. Not that that's a bad thing! Give me the choice between salty, peppery, BBQ-y farro and maple sweet potato, and I'm probably going to pick maple sweet potato. Very good, but not what I was expecting it to taste like. To improve this dish, I might remove the collard greens; they were fine, nowhere near as nasty as the bok choy from last time we threw leaves in the sautee pan, but they didn't really add anything, they just made me chew a little longer any time I got a bite with one.
Katie:
I noticed someone deftly avoided addressing my statement about not getting sick of each other. I see. Well. This will long be remembered. In 5 or 10 years, I'm gonna bring this up. "Remember that time in our blog when you said you were sick of me?!". You know, typical wife stuff.
I echo Nick's comments about the BBQ flavoring. There was simply not enough of it. I am all for maple paired with BBQ--heck my favorite BBQ sauce is Sweet Baby Ray's Maple--but the maple definitely outweighed any BBQ flavoring for the most part. The sweet potatoes were absolutely the best part. I could have just eaten a whole bowl full of those. I thought the collard greens were fine. I've never had them before so I thought maybe they'd have more of a taste. I'm not sure why I thought that because dark leafy greens just taste like leaves to me. I'm sure someone out there is aghast at my uncultured palate.
PS from Nick:
I'm sorry, I thought we were reviewing food. Everyone welcome to Hammer Down Relationship Review. I am going to give me and Katie a 9/10, based on a strong foundation of shared interests and mutual respect. To improve this relationship, I would remove Katie yelling "Come over here, I want to kick you," and also it would be cool if we could read each other's minds, or perhaps physically become one creature like the changelings on Deep Space 9. Also, Katie and I are that annoying couple on the local news where it's like "They met at age 16 and they're still together even though they're old and gross in the nursing home" and who hold hands while they're out to eat.
PPS from Katie:
It's pretend kicking. The kind where you're like several feet away throwing kicks into the air at a safe distance. It's fun. Just don't accidentally hit like a chair while you're doing it because that hurts. I am stealing Nick's gimmick of suggesting improvements by suggesting we remove Nick's tendency to say "Ew, this is nasty. Here, you try it".
Katie:
I misread teaspoon as tablespoon and vice versa at least three times while cooking. Luckily, I noticed before we actually measured out the ingredients. I thought the prep was straightforward this time but we did leave a few things out. I'm sorry, I will eat something with peas or mushrooms in it if someone else makes it and they're only a tiny amount...but I'm don't want to add them myself. Plus what does a pea even taste like? Nobody is like, "damn, gotta have some tasty ass pea-flavoring on my food!". Mushrooms I get because they are flavorful...just oddly and wrongly textured for my mouth.
Also, whatever kind of coconut milk that comes in a can as a thick, fluffy paste tastes pretty good. Even Nick liked it and he's notoriously not about coconuts, coconut flakes, or things flavored with/by coconuts.
Nick:
I have to agree with Katie; I've never taken a bite of something and been like "This sure could use some disgusting, mushy peas!". Admittedly, I'm sure they're good if you slather enough butter and salt on them, but you can probably make an old boot okay enough to choke down if you slather enough butter and salt on it. Fuck off, peas. Prep for this was pretty easy; throw peas in the garbage, cook some pasta, roast some veggies and combine them all in the sauce.
Post-meal thoughts
Katie:
We yet again had trouble getting the sauce to thicken up. We don't have a full array of pans and pots so maybe we used one that was too small. The sauce being more liquidy than creamy didn't take away from the flavor. It was good--the truffle zest and mushroom concentrate gave it a savory, earthy flavor that I really liked. The roasted veggies were a great addition, giving surprise bursts of flavor. I'd order this again in our box for sure.
Nick:
This was pretty good! I'm not sure I've had creamy pasta and sauce before, and this was very tasty; who'd have thought I would have enjoyed coconut milk and my old buddy mushroom stock topping some pasta? That being said, I don't know if I would get this again; it was good, but for the amount of work we put in, I would probably just make ziti and crack open a jar of pre-made red sauce with a lot of garlic in it. Like Katie I liked getting a bite with tomato, but it got a little annoying trying to make sure there was one in every bite. If nothing else, these meals are making me appreciate roasted grape tomatoes. To improve this dish... hmm, I am kind of at a loss here; it's fine, it does everything it sets out to do. If you could order it out of a replicator, that would be great, but we're talking about the same company that sent us a free sample of yogurt in the box but put it UNDER the heavy ingredient bag where it exploded, so I'm trying to stick with the possible here.
All-You-Care-to-Enjoy Plant-based Tavern Keeper’s Feast
Impossible™ Meatloaf
Plant-based Meatloaf with Mashed Potatoes, Mushroom Gravy, and Seasonal Vegetables
Nick: I will admit right off the bat I was a little afraid to order this. I've never had meatloaf that I remember, let alone plant-based Impossible(TM) meatloaf, and I was half afraid I was going to get some kind of weird frankenfood that I'd pick at and just eat the mashed potatoes and then the waitress would come by like "what's the matter, didn't like the Impossible(TM) plant-based meatloaf??" and then yell at the back "HE DIDN'T LIKE THE IMPOSSIBLE(TM) PLANT-BASED MEATLOAF!!". As it turns out, the Impossible(TM) Plant-based Meatloaf was so much like the Platonic ideal of perfect Meatloaf that I ate a ton of Impossible(TM) Plant-based Meatloaf. I did a Google search later and apparently this was some kind of mixture of beans, soy protein and spices, but I swear to you if the menu didn't specifically call this out as Impossible(TM) Plant-based Meatloaf I would have thought it was the real thing. And it was very tasty! Somehow, this really did deliver, in taste and texture, the perfect, even slightly burned meatloaf. Amazing. I only ate half the mashed potatoes because I filled up on Impossible(TM) Plant-based Meatloaf, a sentence I never thought I would write. What a time to be alive.
Katie: We also had a salad that was good. The real star was this meatloaf! I swear I thought I didn't like Impossible meat the last time I had it but I think it might have been that particular restaurant's attempt at mimicking it. This was amazing! I would happily swap this for any type of beef, any time.
Oooey Gooey Toffee Cake
Vanilla Toffee Cake, Chocolate Sauce, and Vanilla Ice Cream
Katie: Oh. My. Gosh. There are no words. Should have...sent a poet. Okay maybe there are some words: joyous, scrumptious, and still-telling-people-about-it-months-laterness.
Nick: Well, now I wish I'd saved some of the energy I put into talking about the joy of Impossible(TM) Plant-based Meatloaf to describe this oooey gooey toffee cake, which was absolutely delicious. Like Katie, I'm not sure I really have the words for this; I'd recommend just clicking on the picture to make it full size. It was just as delicious as it looks. Man, I want oooey gooey toffee cake now.
Margherita Flatbread
Nick: Pretty good! This is basically pizza dough, tomato sauce, mozzarella, and big tomato slices. I will admit that I picked the mozzarella off this, but only because it upsets my stomach; I ate the big tomato pieces, which is unusual for me. I'm such a brave boy. The world's bravest boy, some say. No, no, there's no time to go into who says that, let's see what Katie has to say.
Katie: I remember liking this. Nick was an extremely brave boy.
Mama's Italian Pasta
Katie: My aversion to meat is less "this used to be a cow who was alive and liked being alive somewhere" than I really don't like the texture, taste, and look of putting it in my mouth. It is a huge deal when there is meat I can handle in my mouth and eat. It is somewhat about the whole cow thing (like some I didn't eat any pigs for years after Babe because that scene where he's crying for his mom is heartbreaking) but mostly because I have a thing with food texture. I'm sure some of you can relate.
Anyway, the pasta was really good. I'd order it again but maybe without the appetizer so I can have dessert instead. Yay for cake and ice cream!
