food

Blue Apron: No, They Didn’t Pay Me to Say What I’ve Been Saying

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This was my family's favorite Blue Apron meal so far.
This was my family’s favorite Blue Apron meal so far. The chicken was flavorful, the potatoes were delicious, and that’s a homemade honey-mustard dipping sauce!

I know you’ve been seeing the numerous Instagram posts about our family’s Blue Apron meals. Unlike many of the other reviews out there, Blue Apron did not send me a bunch of free meals in return for the publicity.

However, I did take advantage of a promotion they often offer to new customers: your first four meals are delivered for the price of one.

I’ve been getting their meal boxes periodically for 2 months now and I wanted to summarize my thoughts on the program. This is a data dump of the features our family likes, as well as the things our family doesn’t like. I’ll try to organize the thoughts so it can be useful to someone.

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Utah Discoveries 9: In-N-Out Burger near Hill AFB

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Lunch for 4 for under $30? Yes please!!
Lunch for 4 for under $30? Yes please!!

For those who don’t know, Dave and I are “Eastern People”. He’s from New York, and with the exception of 3 years or so in Hawaii when I was very young, I grew up on the Eastern Seaboard. We are accustomed to humidity, high populations, and rich colonial U.S. history around us.

People from the western U.S. have their own set of traditions and nuances (calling “interstates” “freeways”, for example), and apparently In-N-Out Burger is one of them. There aren’t many of these restaurants, and they’re all concentrated in a 5-state area: California, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, and Texas (why they completely leapfrogged over New Mexico is beyond me). In-N-Out has no plans to expand beyond this small market, unlike Five Guys, which now has well over 1000 outlets. We had a chance to check it out!

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On My Latest Trip to Super Walmart: Ice Cream News

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This is really yummy!
This is really yummy!

Tonight I went to the Bellevue, Nebraska Walmart Super Center mainly to pick up some Dorothy Lynch salad dressing for my boys. It’s the only kind Timmy will have on his salads, otherwise he eats his salad “dry”.

I decided to pick up a small container of ice cream for myself while I was there, and I was in search of a pint-sized container, such as Ben & Jerry’s or Haagen-Dazs.

I found the gelato pictured above, and it’s very yummy! While I have been sitting here watching the NFL Draft enjoying it, I looked at the nutrition information:

  • Serving size: 1/2 cup
  • Number of Servings: 3.5

What?

Then I looked at the size of the container: 14 ounces?

Scammed again!

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Our New Soda Stream — And Alternatives to the Soda Stream Mixes

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Our new toy. Thanks to GeekMom's Amazon Associates credit.
Our new toy. Thanks to GeekMom’s Amazon Associates credit.

In February I got my Amazon.com credit for all of the product referrals I did over the holidays for GeekMom. It was a very generous payout and we bought some goodies such as a pressure cooker, a hangar for our family’s running medals, and a Soda Stream.

We got a very basic Soda Stream model, which included the carbonator with CO2 tank, one 1L bottle and a sampler pack of flavor syrups.

The system is very straightforward, and doesn’t even require electricity: screw a water-filled bottle to the carbonator and depress a button on top to carbonate to the level you desire (they recommend depressing the button three times, we’re still trying to figure out how much carbonation we actually like).

We all tasted several of the sample syrups that came with the system and they’re pretty good. Dave noticed that all the syrups were surprisingly low-calorie and upon further investigation, we noticed that they ALL had sucralose (otherwise known as Splenda).

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Preparing for a Two Week Tour…

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You might or might not remember my post from when we first moved to Florida in 2010. When we have to move from one military assignment to another, we often will relinquish some of our pantry goods and cleaning wares.  Such as vinegar, soy sauce, household cleaners, Lysol sprays, and any perishables in the fridge and freezer. … Read more

Florida Discoveries 32: Cajun Specialty Meats, Pensacola

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The family spent Wednesday in Pensacola, enjoying one last trip to the Pensacola MESS Hall before they close for the school year. After our time at the MESS Hall, we looked for an inexpensive — but not fast-food — lunch option.  There are typically numerous restaurants along Gregory St. near the Civic Center and we … Read more

Shameless Pitch: Immaculate Baking Co.

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A favorite family breakfast!

I’d like to share a new favorite product in our house: Immaculate Baking Co.

No, this isn’t a “Back to Basics” type of thing, but I started by trying out the cinnamon rolls, like the ones pictured above.  I’ve been trying to migrate my kids away from the super-processed Pillsbury refrigerated dough products, and was just going to try to make cinnamon rolls with my bread machine.  But that still takes a while — I’d make up the dough the night before, assemble the rolls before bedtime and let them rise in the fridge.

But I had two problems with this: (a) I’m so tired at night I rarely do much food prep the night before and (b) such recipes tend to make too many cinnamon rolls.  And if I bake them, they will all be eaten.  We don’t need that.

At my local Wal-mart, I spied these Immaculate Baking cinnamon rolls positioned high above the Pillsbury products that are at eye level.  (Tangent: Check out this blog post about the psychology of product placement in grocery stores, at every store I’ve seen these cinnamon rolls, they’re on the top shelf).

I liked the non-GMO corn products and unprocessed ingredients.  I thought I’ve give them a shot.  The flour is unbleached and unbromated, the salt is sea salt and the baking powder is aluminum-free.

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Canning Homemade Fresh Salsa

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You know it happens to you, right?  Those food cravings. Come on…admit it! Sometimes you just feel like having something that isn’t sitting in your fridge or pantry.  In my case, it was homemade fresh salsa.  I like the salsa that you get in Mexican restaurants.  The kind that comes to you in a carafe … Read more