“These pears are getting soft,” my daughter announced from the kitchen.
I sighed. I buy so many produce that goes bad because the child that requested it forgets about it. Indeed, I buy so much food that goes bad before anyone uses it. As it happened, at that very moment I had a two or three week old puff pastry sheet in my fridge. I’d bought a package to make mushroom empanadas for my vegan daughter and only used one sheet.
The softening pears I knew I could use – but the puff pastry? I searched online and found people asking if they could use it a few days to a week after putting it in the fridge – but two to three weeks? That seemed crazy! Still, my pastry sheets did not smell bad, they had no hint of mold in them (I do keep my fridge very cold), they were not slimy and they only had a couple of spots were they’d dried out and even then, not too much. So what the heck! I figured I’d use them.
I placed the puff pastry on a cutting board and rolled it a bit with a rolling pin. Then I transferred it to a lined cookie sheet. I sliced the pears somewhat thinly (I used the two large ones I had) and placed the pear slices on the puff pastry. I mixed some raw sugar with a bit of cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger and sprinkled it on the pears. Then I ground some almonds and sprinkled these on top.
I put the baking sheet in the fridge and turn on the oven to 400F. Once it was preheated, I put the baking sheet in the oven and baked it for about 20 minutes.
The results were great. Really, really delicious. And vegan!
My daughter had a craving for zucchini tonight (!), and I didn’t really have many ingredients to work with. So I sauted succhini slices in some olive oil with some chopped garlic (I used 2 cloves but should have used 4), cooked some chickpea pasta, and then added it to the pan. The zucchini had started to caramelized by the time I added the pasta and it was pretty sweet. I added some fresh thyme, and my daughter was quite happy with the results.
Some times the best meals are the simplest. There is nothing complicated about this HelloFresh meal of Breaded Pork Cutlets with Garlic Bread and an Apple and Sunflower Seed Salad. Nothing exotic. It can be simply put together with supermarket staples that won’t have you searching around up and down the aisles and things you already have in your pantry. And it’s very tasty and very satisfying.
All the ingredients came fresh and stayed that way, even though I cooked the meal four days after it arrived. The pork wasn’t dry and the seasoning was spot on. However, they listed the amount of kosher salt to add, but they neither included it in the kit or listed kosher salt as a needed ingredient. I didn’t have kosher salt around, so I used a smaller amount of table salt. The original recipe called for breading the pork in a plastic bag, but I used a bowl as I didn’t have a gallon ziplock bag around and I’m already using too much plastic by getting these meal kits. A bowl worked just as well.
I very much enjoyed the salad. Mine came with mixed greens – though I see HelloFresh also offers it with just arugula – and a yellow apple (golden delicious?). The dressing was olive oil and lemon juice – I’ve not been fond of this combination in other salads, but it worked here. The star of the show were the sunflower seeds, however, which added crunch and a faint sweetness to the whole thing.
I’m not giving this kit a perfect 10, however, because Hello Fresh did not include the butter needed to make the garlic bread and I didn’t have any at home. I suppose I could have looked at the list of ingredients that I needed to have at hand for this recipe before I chose it, but the whole point of meal kits is to not have to go shopping for the ingredients. Particularly in the case of this meal, where all the ingredients are so easily available, if I’m going shopping for butter, I might as well pick up the rest and cook the meal for a fraction of the cost. I understand that Hello Fresh is trying to save money by not providing the butter, but it’s still not cool.
In any case, I think oven-baked garlic bread is not a good choice for this meal. Both the pork and the salad can be put together rather quickly, but making the garlic bread requires preheating the oven, which is both a waste of energy for such a small meal, and a waste of time. Instead, they could have suggested toasting the bread in the same pan where the pork was cooked.
I’m also dinging the recipe because I was still hungry when I finished – even though I ate a lot of salad (there was plenty of it). Perhaps that’s due to not being able to make & eat the garlic bread.
After the discount, I paid $14 for this kit or $7 per serving (regular price would have been $20/kit or $10/serving).
BREADED PORK CUTLETS
1/2 cup panko breadcrumbs
3/4 tsp salt
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp onion powder
1 tsp paprika
4 pork cutlets
2 Tbsp sour cream
vegetable oil for frying
1/2 lemon, cut into 2 wedges
In a medium bowl, combine breadcrumbs, salt and spices. In a different bowl or plate, coat pork cutlets with sour cream (you may need to use your fingers to spread it). Transfer the cutlets to the bowl with the breadcrumbs and coat well.
Heat a 1/4″ layer of oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Once hot, transfer cutlets into the skillet and fry on each side, about 2-3 minutes per side. Transfer to paper towels to absorb extra oil. Serve with lemon wedges on the side to squeeze on the cutlets.
APPLE AND SUNFLOWER SEED SALAD
1 apple
1 celery stalk
2 oz spring mix
1 Tbsp olive oil
1/2 lemon
1 oz sunflower seeds
Core the apple and slice into thin slices. Thinly slice the celery.
Put apple, celery and spring mix into a medium bowl. Dress with olive oil. Squeeze the lemon half on it and mix. Add the sunflower seeds and mix again.
This week I went back to Hello Fresh, as I didn’t like the offerings of any of the services I hadn’t yet tried – and I was given a good deal ($20 off each of 4 boxes) for re-activating my account. I got just two meals (which frankly, works better for us, as I’m always rushing to cook all kits before they go bad) and tonight I made the first one for my daughter and I. It was pretty good.
This meal of Creamy Dill Chicken with Roasted Potatoes and Green Beans was extremely simple: you cut and bake some potatoes, baked some green beans, sauteed some chicken and then made a quick sour cream-mustard-dill sauce. Still, it was a tasty and satisfying meal and I very much enjoyed the sauce (recipe below). My daughter didn’t have any sauce, but she liked the other elements.
There were some problems, however. The main one is that there wasn’t enough sauce. What they sent was barely enough for one serving (so it was fortunate my daughter didn’t want to try it). They need to double the ingredients for it. Secondly, the chicken breasts were too thin and they cooked in less than the 4-6 minutes per side that they recommended. Also, the portion size was a bit on the small size (or I was particularly hungry).
This is a very easy meal to put together on your own, however. I think I will add dill to the herbs I grow on my window to be able to easily make it again.
After the discount, I paid $14 for this kit or $7 per serving (regular price would have been $20/kit or $10/serving).
Update: it’s spring and this kit now comes with asparagus instead of green beans. I ordered it again – forgetting I’d already had it – and served it to my husband this time. He loved the dill sauce. Once again, there wasn’t enough of it.
Creamy Dill Chicken
2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts (12 oz)
salt & pepper to taste
1 Tbsp olive oil
2 Tbsp sour cream
2 tsp chicken stock concentrate
1 tsp fresh chopped dill
1 tsp mustard
2 Tbsp water
Pat dry chicken breasts and season with salt & pepper. Heat oil in a saute pan over medium heat. Add chicken breaths and cook until cooked through and golden, 3-6 minutes per side. Turn off heat, remove chicken and keep warm.
Add the sour cream, chicken stock concentrate, dill, mustard and water to the saute pan and mix well, scraping up the brown bits on the pan. Serve chicken with sauce.
The star of the meal was the chicken – and given that the boneless filets were just sprinkled with salt and oregano and then sauteed on olive oil, I’m not sure I can give Blue Apron that much credit for it. Alas, the chicken was fresh and it had never occurred to me to cook chicken so simply, so they do get some kudos. I would definitely make it again, but with thighs, as the breasts were too dry.
The tomato/caper sauce was OK. It was only needed because chicken breast is so dry in general – it’d been superfluous and not missed if we’d had thighs. The farro with zucchini was actually quite tasty. Alas, I don’t like zucchini so I didn’t actually eat the vegetable, and there was far too much of it – but my zucchini-eating daughter liked it. The farro without the zucchini was good. Again, not in a mind blowing way.
The meal was quick to put together – I’m a slow cook and I don’t think it took me over 40 minutes, and there weren’t too many complicated steps. In all, I was happy to find how easy oregano chicken can be and that farro is another whole grain alternative to rice my family members will eat.
My local Grocery Outlet store is currently currying a variety of Sky Valley bottled sauces. I picked up the Tikka Masala sauce because it’s vegan, and I’m always looking for stuff that my vegan daughter can eat. Unfortunately this was a bust.
The sauce itself wasn’t bad. While I wouldn’t say it tastes like the tikka masala you can get at Indian restaurants, it’s better than anything I could make myself. Indeed, it tastes very much like Trader Joe’s masala sauce. They are both far more acidic and less sweet than your restaurant tikka masala sauce.
The big problem for my vegan daughter was that the sauce was too spicy. She ate it with lots of rice, but still couldn’t get past the spice. Now, she doesn’t like spicy food, so in terms of level of spice I’d say this sauce is “medium” spicy.
The 13.8 oz bottle of Sky Valley tikka masala sauce sells on their website for $5.30, but it was just $2 at Grocery Outlet and it was on sale for just $1.75 at Walmart (regular price $3.65). It’s produced in Danville (so not to far away from where I live) and exported all the way to the UAE!
I have a vegan daughter, so in my journey to try all meal kit companies, I decided to give Purple Carrot a try. It was a total disaster. She did not like any of the three meals she got, and ended up not eating more than a few bites from each. This is a child (well, teen) who realizes that since she adopted a vegan diet, she does not get to be picky on what she eats – but Purple Carrot failed to meet even her very low standards.
In all, I cooked three meals in one week. I got a $30-off your first week deal, so I ended up paying $42 for this box ($14 per kit or $7 per portion). Money very badly spent as most of the food went to waste, even the dog wouldn’t eat it.
The Plans
When you subscribe to Purple Carrot you will get a weekly box with three 2-serving meal kits, for $72. You can choose a so-called “plan,” high protein, quick & easy or chef’s choice, but that only determines which meals you will get sent by default if you don’t make choices in a given week. Shipping is free.
Purple Carrot also sells a variety of breakfast and lunch kits that you can add to your order.
The Food
Purple Carrots offers six vegan meal choices a week. Proteins are usually tofu, tempeh, beans or legumes. My daughter is a big fan of “fake” meats – in particular fake chicken -, so she wasn’t thrilled that these were not offered. The recipes are modern and sound like the sort of things you would get at a mid-priced restaurant here in California. As you could expect, there is an emphasis on vegetables and whole grains, and many of the recipes have Mediterranean, Mexican and Asian influences.
The ingredients were mostly fresh and of good quality, but the garlic came damaged, as you can see. I’ve never seen garlic turn this way, so I’m not totally sure what happened to it. I did e-mail Purple Carrot and got a $5 credit for my next order – which will never happen.
The ingredients came organized by kit/recipe in plastic bags – with some larger ingredients (the bok choy shown here) on their own bags. The garlic came on its own as it was supposed to be used in the other recipes.
The Shipping and Delivery
The box came the day it was supposed to come and during the day. I had an e-mail the week before letting me know when I’d be getting it, but no reminders nor a tracking number.
The Packaging
The kits came inside a cardboard box. Unfortunately, not a particularly well sealed cardboard box. Fortunately, all the contents were fine (save for the garlic).
Inside there were recipe cards, and the ingredients, with freezer packs at the bottom. Everything was crisp. I don’t believe the lining was recyclable but I’m not sure. The freezer had to be thrown on the trash.
The issue here was texture. To my daughter, the zucchini noodles looked so much like pasta that she was expecting them to eat and feel like pasta – the strange texture threw her off and not in a pleasant way. She also disliked the texture of the “meatballs”.
Finally, this dish suffered from being tasteless. Not only was the tofu pretty insipid – something which my daughter has come to expect – but so was the quinoa pilaf.
Despite our experience, Purple Carrot seems to be liked by many people, and given the lack of vegan meal kits out there, it’s probably worth your while to try it for a week if you are vegan (just remember to unsubscribe after you get your box to avoid paying for a second week – in case you don’t like their fare).
The kale is missing from the photo but I also cooked it. The potatoes here are a little bit underdone, but the ones I took out later were great.
Rating: 6/10
While some of the meals offered in meal kits are complicated, some are fairly straight forward. This meal kit for Seared Steaks & Roasted Potatoes with Balsamic-Glazed Mushrooms & Shallot was pretty much what it sounds like, though with a couple of extra twists that made it nicer than expected.
First, the good part. My daughter enjoyed the kale very much (recipe below). It was cooked in ghee and mixed with creme fraiche. I guess i’ll have to pick up some of that at the supermarket. I also liked the mushrooms with balsamic vinegar *on their own*. But their sweetness didn’t really compliment the beef or the potatoes.
The roasted potatoes were really the star of the meal. They were absolutely delicious – crunchy on the outside and melt-in-your-mouth soft inside. I think the trick was that I cut them a little bit in advance and put them in a bowl with water and lemon juice. I dried them before putting them on an aluminum-foiled covered baking sheet and sprinkling olive oil and salt on them. I had forgotten to pre-heat the oven, so I cooked them in a cold oven. Again, they were great.
The flank steaks, however, were a huge disappointment. They tasted like cheap, low quality meat. One of the reasons I’ve enjoyed subscription kits is that many of them provide higher quality meats than those I can find at my supermarket. That is most definitely not the case here. This may very well be the reason why I wouldn’t stay subscribed to Blue Apron long term. We’ll have to see if their other meats are as disappointing.
I got this meal kit with a discount, so I paid $12 for the kit or $6 per serving. It was an adequate amount of food.
Creamed Kale
Makes 2 small servings
1 Tbsp ghee
2 garlic cloves, minced
2 cups of chopped & de-veined kale leaves
salt & pepper to taste
1/4 cup of water
1 Tbsp crème fraiche
Heat ghee on a saute pan over medium-high heat. Add garlic and cook until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Add the kale leaves and season with salt & pepper. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the leaves wilt. Add the water, reduce heat to medium, and continue cooking until the leaves are soft and the water has evaporated. Remove to a bowl, taste and adjust seasoning.
I made this kit – my first from Blue Apron – for my vegan daughter. Overall she thought it was OK, but wasn’t overly pleased by it. She feels she can make tastier food by herself (and she’s 16!).
The recipe was fairly straightforward and quick to prepare. The lime wasn’t at all necessary as the curry was sour enough. I appreciated that the aromatics (garlic, ginger, onions, etc.) already came all mushed up so I didn’t have to peel & chop them. I do think that this rice could have benefited from a starch, rice in particular. I can’t say much more about it, other than the portion was sufficient for two meals (though that might have been because she didn’t really like it).
I paid ~$12 for this kit, using a special offer. I think it was worth it at this price, but I’m not sure it would have been at $20.
Eating out – or getting take out – with a vegan is no easy matter, at least here in San Leandro (L.A., though, is another matter altogether). So I’m starting to ask restaurants what vegan dishes they offer previous to taking my daughter to the restaurant.
These four dishes are always vegan at Favorite Indian, Hayward. I’m sure that’s true too at the other branches, but you may want to confirm.
Vegetable Pakora, veggies coated with seasoned chickpea flour and fried.
Dal Curry, a yellow lentil curry. I tried this at the buffet, and it was pretty good.
Aloo Gobi, potatoes and cauliflower cooked with spices.
Bhindi Masala, okra cooked with spices and onions.
Chana Masala, chick peas cooked with spices. Alas, my daughter is not too fond of this.
In addition, Favorite India can make the following dishes vegan. Simply ask them to make them with no cream when you order them:
Baingan Bharta
Eggplant roasted in tadoor and cooked in a cream and tomato sauce
Navratam Korma
Vegetables, nuts &
cheese cooked in a mild sauce (asked them to hold both the cream and
the cheese/paneer)
Mushroom Matar
Mushroom & green
peas cooked with onion & tomatoes
Dal Makhani
Whole black lentil & red kidney beans cooked in a creamy sauce.
They may have other vegan dishes at their buffet, so it doesn’t help to ask. The restaurant manager/owner – the young woman who is often at the reception desk – is very knowledgeable as to the ingredients.
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