Kimchi & Barley Miso Ramen with Blue Apron

It's no secret that my family has a serious love of food.  I adore cooking, and we ALL adore eating.  We've definitely gotten to explore a lot of new recipes over the past couple of years as I've been partnering with Blue Apron.   The weeks when our box of fresh ingredients arrives, the girls help me dig through it like a treasure chest.  I love that.  Cooking with my mother was one of my favorite childhood memories, and it's fun seeing that working its way to my own kiddos.  Even Johnny has gotten back on the cooking train with me.  Thumbs up for men who cook.

Blue Apron also offers a recycling program, a two person or family meal plan, and step-by-step instructions for every recipe.  This time around, we made Kimchi and Barley Miso Ramen and it was delicious.


Here's a spread of the yummy ingredients for the recipe.  See that heart dish?  It's full of garlic.  Yum!



I'm 100% a ramen girl, so I was super excited to make this.  What I didn't expect was for it to be a hit with Poesy (minus the kimchi and egg).  I count this as a win for my picky little eater.


Dress c/o ModCloth

I just made mushroom and poblano pepper quesadillas with an avocado-radish salsa last week and they were also delicious.  I honestly thought I despised radishes because of past encounters, but it all worked so well together!  I'm learning not to rule things out as quickly these days.

**If you are interested in trying Blue Apron for the first time, click here to receive 2 free meals with your first order!  This offer is good for the first 25 readers that sign up!  Happy cooking!

You can find our past Blue Apron posts right here!

*This post is sponsored by Blue Apron but all opinions are, of course, my own.  xo.

Making Bibimbap At Home With Blue Apron

I remember the first time some friends took us out for bibimbap-- it was love at first taste.  I've never felt brave enough to make something like that at home, so when I was choosing my latest Blue Apron box, they had me at Vegetable Bibimbap & Kimchi.  You mean Blue Apron will ship me all the fresh ingredients AND walk me through how to make it??  Yes, please.  Plus, they are working to develop a sustainable food system and offer a recycling program for the packaging, which makes me very happy.  Now, let's take a peek at how my first shot at making veggie bibimbap at home went:


Poesy and I were way too excited over how cute these enoki mushrooms were.  I usually don't love mushrooms, but I was definitely a fan of these.


As you can see, Poesy was in charge of the recipe while I made sure the vegetables were cleaned and cut.  Her instructions were something like, "Step 1-  Chop vegetables.  Step 2- Make me eggs.  Step 3- Do the thing."  It was incredibly specific.  ;)


I love this shot of her smelling the minced ginger.  I'm pretty sure I never even tasted ginger until I was out of high school, so it gets me excited to introduce my kids to these amazing flavors at such young ages.


I left Poesy in charge of the cold ingredients while I moved on to sautéing the mushrooms, boiling the brown rice, and roasting the kohlrabi... which is a vegetable I hadn't previously tried but ended up really enjoying.

 

When the hot ingredients were finished, I layered them into bowls, added the kimchi, and then topped with a fried egg.  My egg game wasn't quite as pretty as the picture on the recipe card, but still tasted so good!


This is honestly my favorite Blue Apron recipe to date!  The ginger mixed with loads of garlic and the crunchiness of the kimchi with the fried enoki mushrooms all worked together in such a flavorful salty/sweet/spicy sort of way.  Plus, this recipe had around 5 different steps before you put all of the ingredients in a bowl together, so I think it would be easy to modify it to make bigger batches for a larger group of people.  Making (veggie) bibimbap at home doesn't intimidate me anymore, so I guess I'm gaining more those cooking skills!  Yay!

If you are interested in trying out Blue Apron for the first time, click here to receive 2 free meals with your first order!  This offer is good for the first 25 readers that sign up!

Baking Calzones With Blue Apron

Calzones.  We all know what they are.  I'm actually pretty fond of them, though I laugh heartily when Ben gets taunted about them on Parks and Recreation.  Though I've ordered these delicious pizza pockets at restaurants many times, I've never tried my hand at making them at home.  We got our latest Blue Apron shipment last week, and I have to say, I picked this package solely for the calzone making experience.  Just in case you're staring at your screen like "whaaaaaaat are you talking about exactly, Katie?"...

Blue Apron is a service that sends recipes (+ all the fresh, sustainable ingredients for said recipes) straight to your door in a refrigerated box (though, with as cold as MO has been, the outside feels like a refrigerator).  Johnny and I typically choose the 2 person plan, but they also offer a family plan.  My family is terrible about eating out once we run out of groceries, just because we get super busy and don't make the time for grocery shopping.  Blue Apron helps me to slow down and get back to cooking, because all my excuses fly out the window.  Which is good.  Sometimes I need that.


(*Sigh*  Have I mentioned I love this kitchen?  Oh.  Yeah.  A lot of times.)


So, back to the calzones:  these were really fun to make.  Actually, the girls were out with their Aunt and Uncle while I was prepping and baking, and Johnny and I had way too much fun throwing pizza dough in the air like goons.  It was one of those moments where I thought, "why don't we cook together more.  This is really fun."  So, we're going to do just that.
Also, the green stuff you see in the pictures above is kale.  When Hope got home, she tried the calzones and liked them.  I got a very picky child to eat kale.  What?!


I can officially say:  Ben Wyatt, I stand in solidarity with your love of calzones.  They are kind of wonderful.

We've been using the Blue Apron service for about 1 and a half years now, and I still enjoy it every time.  I really love cooking, and they help me slow down and branch out with my meals.  Actually, I'm cooking cauliflower steaks tomorrow night and I'm super curious about what they will taste like!

If you are interested in trying out Blue Apron for the first time, click here to receive 2 free meals with your first order!  This offer is only good for the first 25 readers that sign up, so get it if you want it, friends!

**Also, you can click right here to see my other Blue Apron posts!

*This is a sponsored post, and I'm so grateful for the opportunity to work with companies I love and trust.  Thanks for reading, friends.

Adventures With Spaghetti Squash

This is my first recipe/cooking post from my new kitchen, and I could not be more excited!  The kitchen in our last house was very small and very outdated, so cooking my first meal in this beautiful, open kitchen was an absolute delight.  Oh!  And this was my very first time cooking spaghetti squash!  I've always meant to try it, but for some reason it has taken me a lot of years to actually attempt it.  Maybe it was fear of the unknown?  Laziness?  Who knows.  This particular recipe came from Blue Apron, and I have to admit, it was nice to have a helping hand with something brand new to me.  If you remember from my other Blue Apron posts, they send a refrigerated box of fresh ingredients and step-by-step cooking instructions right to your doorstep.  I've been pushed out of my cooking comfort zone many times using their services, and I love it!  Here's how my first experience with making roasted spaghetti squash went down:


Here are the pretty components that came in my delivery.  Swoon.


I began by prepping my ingredients-- washing and chopping veggies, and preheating the oven for the squash.


After I cut the squash in half, it went in the oven to roast while I started the sauce on the stove.  Fresh garlic, onion, mushrooms, and oregano were the first things to go in.


The aroma from this filled my whole house.  Oh my goodness.  The smell of home-cooked meals wafting through the house is one of my very favorite things.


When the squash was finished roasting, I scooped out the pulp and removed the outer shell.  I threw the meat in a pan with some water and a little butter, and then cooked it a little longer until it was ready!


This meal was one of my very favorites!  This was from the two person meal plan, but it was so filling that we ended up having extra and I got to have it for lunch the next day!  I'm already planning all the different ways I want to try preparing spaghetti squash.  So good!

I'm definitely looking forward to trying more recipes next month.  I'm especially interested in the whole wheat linguine with kale, red walnuts, and percorino cheese and the mole-mushroom tacos.  I'm so ready to get back into the swing of cooking this fall and winter!  It's one of the things Johnny and I have been most excited about in our new home.

Oh, and one more reason to love Blue Apron: they now offer a recycling program!  You can either use their recycling locator to help you find local recycling options for your packaging, or you can return your packaging for free to Blue Apron via USPS.  You can learn more about these options right here.  This makes me extremely happy!

**If you are interested in trying it out for yourself, the first 25 readers will get two free meals on their first Blue Apron order.  Just click here! 

Happy cooking, friends!!  xo.