Three Weeks Cooking With Blue Apron

Soul Food

Since getting married, Michael and I have made half-assed and intermittent attempts at prioritizing homemade dinner. But you all remember my inability to say no to opportunity, right? Which means that rather than learning how to cook together, the past six years has seen dinner eaten on train rides home, or on my couch balanced alongside my laptop while I try to multitask eating, working, and spending quality time with my husband. So when APW was asked if we wanted to try a new food service called Blue Apron, which delivers pre-measured fresh chef-created recipe ingredients to your door, I volunteered to be the guinea pig. Really, I just wanted a few weeks of my life to be easier.

I’ve written about my weight gain on this site before. The funny thing about gaining weight, or being chubby, or fat, or plus sized, or whatever you want to call it, is that people always assume your food issues come from a lack of restraint. It must be all those cheeseburgers! Or the pie. In reality nobody knows more about restraint than I do. Thanks to four years of dieting college roommates, I can put together a 1200-calorie per day meal plan with my eyes closed. But dieting in our culture doesn’t put any emphasis on eating to fuel your body, or on listening to what foods make it feel good (on a physical and emotional level), or on building healthy habits just for the sake of doing good things for yourself. It’s a numbers game. So cooking? I just gave up trying to learn. Why bother to get excited about grilled chicken and steamed broccoli?

soul food

In my path to embracing and loving this body that I’m in, I discovered intuitive eating and the Healthy At Every Size movement, which puts emphasis on whole body health instead of size, and suddenly all the puzzle pieces came together in a way that made sense for the first time (without leaving me hangry). Now my job is just to feed myself with real food (most of the time, at least, because French Fries are still awesome), the kind that fuels your body, and then pay attention to how it responds. It’s so good, you guys. My body has never felt better, and I even get to eat real butter again.

But freeing as it’s been, putting my revelation into practice within my marriage has been a separate challenge. And this dinner thing still feels like trying to squeeze blood from a stone. There are three of us living in my house, with the responsibility of dinner prep usually falling to either my roommate or me. Which means a lot of pre-shopping conversations about what meal we can cook that we’ll all like, followed by a grocery shopping trip during which we inevitably forget something (my roommate’s philosophy is that if you can’t find something easily at the grocery store, it probably wasn’t that important to begin with). Then Michael will come home and ask what’s for dinner, at which point I exasperatedly shout I DON’T KNOW because if I have to think about it for one more second I might kill someone. Complicating this process is the fact that Michael and Joe are both just trying to not be hungry, while I’m trying to undo twenty-eight years of disordered eating habits and unlock the mythical powers of vegetables. No big deal.

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A few weeks ago I set up my Blue Apron account, set my preferences (no chicken, please and thank you), and waited for our first delivery to arrive via FedEx (which was a bonus in and of itself, since I can hardly get a pizza delivered to my house, let alone groceries). Blue Apron assumes you have salt and pepper and oil, but otherwise, they include everything you need to prepare a complete meal, from the soy sauce in our ramen recipe to the butter we needed for our cod and quinoa meal, all with instructions that were written for novices like me. And while my new lease on life means no more calorie counting, I was pleased to see each meal is between 500 and 700 calories, and they are making a conscious effort to support sustainable practices with local farms. Which is a hell of a lot better than the 200-calorie-why-bother frozen diet food of my past.

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So far, our dinner prep with Blue Apron has been less about convenience and more about learning. I order seafood at almost every restaurant I go to, but have been too insecure to buy it at the grocery store because I don’t know what the hell to do with it. Or how long it lasts in the fridge. Or what you pair it with. (My first Blue Apron lesson was that we do not like salmon. It upsets our New England sensibilities. But last night’s cod was a huge success.) Just last week, I had first time experiences cooking salmon, couscous, fava beans, ramen (not the kind that comes in bulk from Costco), pea shoots, and risotto. It’s been a far cry from my normal, “How many ways can we make zucchini?” method of cooking.

But perhaps the most important development is that Michael and Joe are in the kitchen right now, cooking tonight’s dinner, without me, as I write this post. Someone just shouted “Is it tender and done?!” Which I’m taking as a good sign.

soul food

One of the more challenging aspects of getting married young is having to grow up alongside your partner. It’s really easy to stunt our own growth and settle into the comfortable habits we developed as our teenage and college selves (it’s how we fell in love!). But I plan on being in this marriage for a long time, and I’m finally old enough to realize that this means we can’t be quite as cavalier with our minds and bodies as we used to. And while Michael and I have been working on the big, important, emotional parts of that process, changing our day-to-day habits is a stubborn task. Finding leisure activities that don’t involve movies or video games. Settling on an acceptable bedtime instead of working until three in the morning. Cleaning house out of desire instead of obligation. Eating food that isn’t pizza. Blah, adulthood, blech.

A while back, former-intern-turned-contributor Rachel wrote a post about how to teach a grown-ass adult to do stuff around the house. I remember reading it, and thinking to myself, “Dear God, that’s me!” Right now, with Michael and me, it’s a little like the blind leading the blind. But we’re slowly finding our way out of the dark. Even if it does require a little hand holding.

I think Blue Apron is going to end up being our go-to solution for weeks when we’ll be too busy to grocery shop, or when we want to learn how to cook new things (you can pause and restart your deliveries any time without penalty, and Michael and I are clearly not done learning in the kitchen). In the meantime, 250 APWers will get two free meals when they sign up for their first order with Blue Apron. So, if you’ve been looking for an excuse to learn your way around the kitchen, or are just tired of takeout, go sign up already.

For the rest of you, are your nightly meals a challenge, or do you have some kind of cooking secret/hack I should know about? How are you balancing health, body image, and partnership (especially if you’ve got a partner whose dietary needs are vastly different from your own, like mine)? For those of you who feel a healthy connection between your food and your body, what’s your best wisdom? And seriously, how do you make dinner easy?

This post was sponsored by Blue Apron. The first 250 apw readers to sign up with Blue Apron will receive two free meals on their first Blue Apron order (Click here to redeem.) Thanks Blue Apron for helping make the APW mission possible! 

How We: Planned An Austin Garden Love-Fest

Lacey, Software Developer & Donald, Nursing Student

One sentence sum-up of the wedding vibe: It was a humid day full of wine, tears, tacos, love, and just as much heavy metal as we could handle—getting married has never been so rock and roll.

Planned Budget: $10,000

Actual Budget: $12,000

Number of Guests: 120 out of over 200 invited

Where we allocated the most funds

Our budget broke out into an even split between food, photography, and the venue, each of which cost about $2,000. It was hugely important to us to have terrific food, and our caterers from Austin-staple Maudie’s more than delivered with fajitas, rice and beans, and guacamole. Our guests ate their tacos in the gorgeous gardens of an Austin historic building, the German Free School owned by the German-Texan Heritage Society. This venue was run by the sweetest people and provided a location walking distance to downtown hotels—meaning that our guests could drink and walk back to their rooms, or easily catch a cab, and although the gardens weren’t in bloom because of a freak ice storm the month before, the greenery and natural setting provided a lush backdrop to our ceremony and meant that we didn’t have to worry much about decorating—the location was already beautiful!

Excellent photography with photographers we trusted and who made us comfortable was also a must-have for us. After Donald rejected the websites of almost every photographer in the city, we met with Bill and Mary of Prima Luce Studio. We clicked with them immediately; they are warm, friendly, completely “got” the relaxed-yet-elegant vibe we were going for, and their portfolio spoke for itself. They were more than willing to work with us on budget, and if we could, we’d get married again just to have them shoot another wedding for us. All our guests complimented them on their ability to be everywhere at all times without being obtrusive. Their photos are a perfect representation of how it felt to be at our wedding.

Where we allocated the least funds

We spent only $300 on cake because (ironically) it was vital to us that our cake taste delicious. To that end, we immediately nixed the idea of having a multi-tiered wedding cake, as those are usually frozen for several days before they are decorated. Instead, we got a mix of cakes in red velvet, strawberry-lemon, mocha almond, Italian cream, and carrot from two of our favorite bakeries. One cake was even vegan! We had friends pick them up the day of and borrowed cake stands from our moms to display them. The most important piece of the cake table was our cake topper: a gold plane. The plane is a replica (made by Donald’s dad) of one flown by Donald’s grandfather and was made for his grandparents’ fiftieth wedding anniversary. Since his grandfather passed away several years ago, we loved being able to include him in the festivities by representing him on the cake table. People are still, four months later, talking about how delicious our cakes were.

What was totally worth it

Our favorite out-of-town weddings have been events where the bride and groom went out of their way to make themselves available to their guests for the whole weekend, and we really tried to model that. Even though we were busy and stressed, we had a welcome dinner at a counter service cafe on Thursday, when some of our families arrived; a rehearsal dinner on Friday; the wedding (of course) on Saturday, and a goodbye breakfast at our favorite taco stand on Sunday. Not everyone made it to every event, but that meant we got to spend more one-on-one time with our out-of-town guests. It meant I was up until midnight ironing tablecloths, but so what? An hour before, I’d been drinking with my dad from Oklahoma, my best friend from Alabama, and Donald’s college buddies from New York. The whole weekend felt like a family/friend reunion of everyone who we love, and we were so grateful to be able to make extra time for them. The actual wedding day went by so fast and we’ve both remarked since then on how we felt like we didn’t feel like there was enough time for everyone we wanted to talk to, so making that extra time throughout the weekend helped make up for the speed and intensity of the wedding day itself.

What was totally not worth it

Worrying about the heavy metal band next door.

Let me back up: We got married in downtown Austin next to The Mohawk, a punk club. Usually, their acts don’t go onstage until nine at night, so we thought we would be safe to have the ceremony and most of the dance party reception before they got rolling. On our wedding day, however, The Mohawk played host to a heavy metal festival that started at six! Donald and I were both hyperventilating a bit when we found this out, but after some friendly communication between us and their management, they were silent as church mice for our ceremony, and kept their pre-show music pretty quiet until nearly 8:00. Then, they totally rocked out. Our dance party reception was replaced with a reception more focused on mingling and chatting over the mosh pit next door, and everyone just laughed at how “Austin” it was that there was a sold-out show right next to our wedding. It made my terror that our grandmothers would be shocked and appalled seem very silly.

The moral of the story is that no matter what happens, if you end up married at the end of the day, it just doesn’t matter.

A few things that helped us along the way

Donald had to remind me several times over the course of planning that people love to be asked to help out with weddings. His go-to phrase with me became, “How would you feel if so-and-so asked you to pick up their wedding cake?” Short answer: thrilled! This really helped me ask for help when I needed it and accept help that was offered.

The end result was that so many of the people we love had a hand in our wedding. One of my best friends played our favorite songs for our ceremony (even learning “God Only Knows,” which is apparently a beast to play), and another good friend acted as our officiant. The officiant’s fiancé made Donald’s ring, and even more friends picked up cakes on their way to the ceremony. Yet another friend did my makeup, and my cousin did all the women’s hair. My father-in-law painted seed packet art to point people toward the entrance, and my mom hand-wrote our seed packet escort cards. Our friends and family went out of their way to make our rehearsal dinner and wedding so special, and it’s really true that it wouldn’t have been the same without their help. I could go on and on, but the end result was that our wedding felt like a mini barn raising. We were surrounded by the tangible things our friends and family had done to show their love for us, and that was the greatest gift we could have received.

My best practical advice for my planning self

Read the essay “The People Want Options” as many times as it takes to really sink in. I’d spent the months leading up to the wedding worrying that we weren’t doing enough to make our guests happy and comfortable. Should we have a prayer even though we are not religious? Shouldn’t we have diet soda? Are people going to be able to find the bathrooms? What if they can’t find parking? All of that anxiety disappeared on the day. Your guests are adults: if they have dietary restrictions, they will let you know. If they can’t find the bathroom, they’ll ask someone. If they disagree with your Tibetan singing bowl, Harry Potter, Carl Sagan, totally secular ceremony, they will probably keep it to themselves.

Try to remember that people want to help you. They are offering their assistance because it’s really, really cool to be part of one of the most important days in someone’s life. If they offer to lend you something, make something for you, pick something up, or help you host a craft night, trust that they are offering honestly. Let the people you love participate in this day. Weddings aren’t just for the bride and groom. They’re also for everyone who loves them.

Favorite thing about the wedding

We crafted our ceremony and vows very carefully, and the ceremony wound up being my favorite part. As soon as the music started, all my anxieties about whether everything would go according to plan evaporated. My dad and stepdad walked me down the aisle together, our best friends did readings, we said our vows, and our friends and families watched from the tables where soon they’d be eating fajitas. We wound up standing on the “wrong” sides because the garden was on a slight incline, but that meant I could see my mom through the whole ceremony—a blessing and a curse since she was sobbing and I was trying not to cry! Donald and I were both beaming at each other, and I kept stealing glances at my family and my friends. When Donald said his vows to me, I saw his best man nod and smile at me from behind him, and felt the full importance of what we were doing. From the kiss and recessional on, we were married and full of joy, and it made the rest of the reception so much more than a party.