Plated Review: Baked Gnocchi with Tomato Basil Sauce and Spring Mix Salad

I pretty much always have good things to say about Plated, but this is the best meal we have had yet! It's also something fairly easy to make that we can make on our own (now that we have a handy dandy recipe card, too). Even more exciting is we finally learned how to use broil on the oven! ;)

The meal was for baked gnocchi with homemade tomato basil sauce and a spring mix salad on the side (tossed in a mustard vinaigrette). As you can see, the salad was fresh and it's waiting here to be eaten. The dressing was just enough - it's amazing that Plated can figure out the right proportion of dressing to send, since people can be really picky about that, but I've found that all the salads have the exact perfect amount of dressing. 

Plated Meal Review: Thai Coconut Noodles

It's funny because these reviews are so backlogged that the meals have long since been cooked and eaten by the time they come up here. In fact, I have more meals coming next week from Plated and here I am talking about meals from the beginning of the month!

This meal was Thai Coconut Noodles with Basil and Kale - and it was delicious. One thing we have noticed with the pasta and rice dishes is that you get a ton when you order from Plated. However, often they start to get boring after a while so we decided to add tofu to this to give it a little bit of something extra (and also to make it more of a meal).

Plated Meal Review: Tempeh with Mizuna Slaw and Cannoli

This Plated meal actually accomplished a great deal, even beyond being a cooking opportunity. We were able to try two products we were already planning to review (our Spiral Ninja and Btipsy Lemon Squeezer), and we also finally got to try tempeh. Although we've had tempeh in foods before, we have never made it ourselves and since we like tofu and seitan, we were hoping to add another vegetarian staple to our meal planning options. 

Plated Review: Pappardelle Pasta and Fruit & Citrus Parfaits

Just to demonstrate how backlogged our reviews are, this meal was delivered on 2/20 and we currently have a new Plated box sitting in the kitchen (along with reviews to come). However, I really like Plated and I enjoy telling you about the meals they send. So here's our review and experience with Pappardelle Pasta, as well as Fruit & Citrus Parfaits. 

For this meal, we didn't get creative, following the directions completely. The only exception is that so many of Plated's recipes call for mincing garlic and onions so we purchased a giant container of pre-minced garlic and frozen chopped onions to save ourselves some time. 

I prepped this meal early so it would be ready for cooking later. I wanted to get it going before my husband got home, because that's how easy Plated is. While services like Blue Apron will allow you to be more creative with your meals, Plated is definitely quick, easy, and doable for one. Their recipes usually also include at least one more "comfort food" item with a bit of a twist. This meal is basically a pasta dish, but at least they have you trying things you may normally not.

Plated Meal Review (with Creative License)

I have so many great things to say about Plated. The food is good, the service is exceptional, and the recipes are really suited to our lifestyle. In addition, I've gained so much confidence through using them only for a few months because now I feel comfortable being creative with the recipes. 

This week, we ordered three meals: Tofu with Citrus Glazed Vegetables, Quinoa Stir Fry, and Pasta. My husband and I thought about it a bit and realized we really liked the idea of a tofu stir fry, so we used the tofu from one recipe, along with the orange to make the Stir Fry a citrus soy ginger tofu mix, saving the quinoa and veggies for other recipes. 

Plated Review: Creamy Orzo

Our second Plated meal with our most recent order was Creamy Orzo with roasted spinach and mushrooms. This was probably my least favorite of all the Plated meals we've tried, but it wasn't a bad meal by any means. It just felt like a really good side that was missing something. There was also way more than two of us could eat, but orzo isn't great for reheating later.

Plated Review: Cashew, Tofu, and Peas Stir Fry

I really love Plated. I already have my order in for February 20 because I find their meals filling, tasty, nutritious, and reasonably easy to cook.

We ordered two meals and a dessert with this box, and made the first meal and dessert on the same night (the same day the box arrived). The first meal was a cashew, tofu, and peas stir fry. This was a fairly easy recipe, with the majority of the work really being on mincing garlic and onion (I'm going to buy a jar of minced garlic and frozen chopped onions for future meals, in order to save time, I think). While mincing, we had the jasmine rice cooking and the tofu draining.

The ingredients were also very simple - tofu, jasmine rice, garlic, onion, ginger, snow peas, sugar snap peas, shelled green peas, cashews, and a sauce that combined chili garlic, hoisin, and soy sauce.

Farmivore Review: January 18

Farmivore is a juicing subscription service. Each week (unless you opt to skip a week), they send you four bags of fresh produce for juicing. You can choose from two recipes with four servings each of green juices or four recipes with two servings each of two green juices, as well as two orange and red drinks. They do have a fairly limited subscription area, including NY, CT, PA, MA, and surrounding areas so make sure they cover your zip code.

A big bag of produce ready to go in my brand new juicer!

Blue Apron Meal #3 Review: Acorn Squash with Bulgur Stuffing

It's here! We finally made it. We were lucky my husband had a snow day, so we could start a bit earlier. However, as opposed to the other Blue Apron meals, this didn't take long at all (around 35-40 minutes and that was with a few moments of bad timing).

The hardest part of this meal was probably cutting and scooping the squash, only because it was so solid. Other than that, it was basically chop up some vegetables, roast the squash, boil the bulgur, and once everything got close to ready, cook the veggies.

Plated Review - Meal #2: Butternut Squash Ravioli with Pesto

For this Plated meal, we tried something a bit more complicated. We also got dessert, but by the time we started cooking, we decided to leave the Chocolate Espresso Crinkle Cookies for midweek as a treat. The meal was Butternut Squash Ravioli with Pesto.

Although Plated is generally easier, this meal was a bit of a fiasco, but mostly for reasons beyond anyone's control. We got started fairly late, because my husband was watching football. Since I started by myself, I forgot to take pictures from the beginning, too! Everything was there and the squash was cut already (although I needed to cut it into smaller cubes to make it easier to mash later).

By the time my husband joined me, the squash was roasting in the oven and everything was ready for the pesto. Unfortunately, the pesto calls for either hand mixing (which is quite difficult) or a food processor/blender. Since we had a blender, we were a little overconfident. Suffice it to say, because it's us, we got everything into the blender, turned it in, and then... after 15 years, the blender decided it had had enough and stopped working.

Now things were already cooking and we needed to hand mix pesto. My husband did that while I started the ravioli filling. The water had been boiling but since we were delayed, I put it on low and by the time we were ready to stuff the ravioli, it was barely warm.

Plated Review - Meal #1 (Asian Stir Fry Quinoa and Tofu Bowl with Clementine Upside Down Cakes for Dessert)

As evidenced from our experience with Blue Apron, we aren't really gourmet chefs! (And, yes, I am aware I promised to make acorn squash, but we have definitely determined these meals are best for weekends for us since we just don't have that kind of time during the week).

Plated works the same way as Blue Apron in many respects. You select your meals and they bring you the exact amount, as well as the recipes on big cards with the directions laid out fairly simply. There are also significant differences and I'm going to note the pros and cons I picked up on between both services at the end of this post.

Our first meal with Plated was Asian Stir Fry Quinoa Bowl with Tofu. We also ordered the desserts with this order and we had Clementine Upside Down Cake after we ate.

Everything was prepackaged in two bags (the cabbage and scallions were too big for the main bag), and it was all labeled both by what it was and which meal it belonged to in the event they were separated.

This required a great deal less prep time than our previous two meals - we started cooking about 20-30 minutes after doing an ingredient check and setting everything up. And that's with a debate on how best to mince ginger.

As far as the cooking for this meal, it was really easy. My husband has worked as a cook, but I am basically useless in the kitchen and I was able to contribute. I also found that this was a meal that could easily be made by one person.

All of the ingredients were fresh and full of flavor. And look at the adorable soy sauce containers!

Blue Apron Meal #2: Warm Farro Salad

As I noted yesterday, we're not really the cooking types although we wouldn't mind being better at it. This was our second meal from Blue Apron; we expect to make the third one early this week (Roasted Acorn Squash with Bulgur).

The meal was for Warm Farro Salad, which was totally new to us. Little Miss Crafty asked me earlier what farro is and I didn't know. Now I know it's some kind of grain, but this was definitely adventurous for us!

The farro and arugula formed the base of the salad and the sauce was made of caramelized fennel, orange, olives and olive oil, and mint. It also included toasted hazelnuts and a garnish of feta and pomegranate seeds.

Blue Apron Review (AKA Two Terrible Cooks Make Pasta e Fagioli)

About a month ago, I approached my husband with the idea of trying some of these meal services. As you can see from my ever-growing list, I am generally up for trying anything once, especially if it is something of a surprise! So when I came across Blue Apron, and I saw their three meal choices for this week, I had to dive in! We pay for this subscription.

To be clear, I am not a cook. I can barely make a grilled cheese (okay, I admit I actually can't even make one at all). My husband likes cooking, but he's always really busy and he doesn't have the same adventurous tastebuds, so mealtime in our house is very dull and redundant. On the other hand, when we travel, we love trying new things and every time we're in New York, especially at one of the amazing V-Note or Blossom restaurants, we insist we will try to eat better and cook more at home.

What better time to try this than starting out the new year, right?

We are vegetarians, so the first three meals we received are all vegetarian, but Blue Apron does do meat-based meals as well. We received Pasta e Fagioli, Warm Farro Salad, and Roasted Acorn Squash. Figuring soup couldn't be very complicated, we decided to start with Pasta e Fagioli.

Blue Apron delivers your ingredients individually proportioned and packaged. What we didn't count on was how complicated dicing produce would be for us! With an estimated cook time of 25-35 minutes, we definitely failed. It took us about two hours. You need to be aware, though, that I didn't even know what fennel really was until tonight!

Ingredients for Pasta e Fagioli