Whew, this morning’s work out should have just been titled “Burpees”, I felt that was all I did for a half hour. Yuck! But it’s over now, so TGIF and happy long holiday weekend! I hope you all have something fun planned for this last “official” weekend of summer.
Dinner In
AJ and I subscribe to Blue Apron, which, if you’ve never heard if it, is a food delivery service that honestly just works with our lifestyle. Once a week (and we’ll order 2-3 times a month), Blue Apron delivers a refrigerated box to our doorstep, and it includes all necessary ingredients for 3 recipes that we’ve selected ahead of time.
This works for us because not only is grocery shopping in the city nightmarish, it’s also very expensive! This is particularly true when you’re cooking with a unique ingredient (say, hoisin sauce) and you’ll likely only use a pinch this one time. Blue Apron gives me exactly what I need for each recipe, and there’s no waste! That means all I have to grocery shop for each week are the essentials (milk, bread, yogurts) and one-off meals.
This week’s Blue Apron menu included:
- Seared Steaks with Romesco Sauce & Roasted Potatoes
- Thai Chicken Burgers with Hoisin Mayo & Roasted Potato Wedges
- Fresh Lemon Linguine with Summer Vegetable Sauce & Seasoned Ricotta
Wednesday night I made the Fresh Lemon Linguine. The most time consuming part is the prep – there’s a lot of chopping and dicing involved. However, the instructions are very thorough (with pictures!), and if I don’t like a dish it’s usually because I discovered there’s a particular flavor or spice I’m not fond of, it’s never because of the quality because I find that top notch.
The end result was fantastic! This was an easy 5-star rated dinner for us. And of course Blue Apron doesn’t just have Italian dishes, we try various American cuisines to Asian, French, Mexican – we have a whole International dinner at our disposal (plus vegetarian options).
Bonus, when I whip up dishes like this, I feel like an excellent, fancy cook. It’s good for my self-esteem 🙂
Note: While we are loyal Blue Apron customers, I did not receive any compensation for this post, my opinions are completely my own.
Dinner Out
What do we do when we’re not being fancy with Blue Apron in our tiny kitchen? We enjoy the many dining options NYC has to offer!
Last week I mentioned the Café’tal Social Club, and how we stopped by for a nightcap. If you follow my Instagram, you’ll see that we were back on Monday night for dinner! It was a belated birthday celebration with AJ’s brother Justin and sister Alyssa.
This is, hands down, one of my most favorite places in all of NYC. The food is terrific, the prices are even better, and it has that authentic Little Italy vibe that you don’t get so much these days downtown.
We started with the large Antipasti Fredo for the table.
Then everyone ordered their dinners, a mix of pasta and paninis. I usually go for (and this time was no exception) the Joey Botts panini which is made up of Prosciutto Di Parma, Fresh Mozzarella & Arugula.
We also split a dish of carbonara for the table and topped it off with some Sangiovese 🙂
We even had a celeb sighting! Jonah Hill walked right by our table! He was too quick for any of us to pull out our paparazzi skills though. Womp. What a fun night, I’m already looking for an excuse to go back soon.
How about you?
What’s your favorite Italian dish?
I haven’t tried Blue Apron, but I have tried Hello Fresh twice. The first week I tried the vegetarian dishes for four and the second week I chose the meat/fish dishes for only two people to compare servings, etc. Most evening meals I am cooking for three, so I figured I could supplement the smaller meat portions with more vegetables or starch. Of the six meals we had, I would say five were great and one was just okay, probably a personal preference more then actual bad food! For me, it was a fun way to try some new recipes and expand my horizons. I am enjoying the blog!
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Hi Jen, Good to know! While we love Blue Apron, it’s always nice to have some back-ups in case there’s a week where the menu isn’t a favorite. I’ll definitely keep Hello Fresh in mind and write about it if we end up giving it a whirl 🙂 Thanks for reading!
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From blue apron to social club, from dining in to dining out……. Love it all…..and please let me be your next excuse to go to the social club…sounds so delicious! And I have to say I love all pastas, but I have two favs….a simple dish of bow tie pasta with grandmas meat sauce….topped with a couple of meatballs…and, thanks to AJ….Casio e Pepe…a simple cheese and pepper dish!
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Those sound delicious!! And I’m more than happy to have you be my excuse to go back to the Social Club! 🙂
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