feeling like Super Mom

Because let’s be honest: most days I don’t. Moving has sort of kicked my butt in a lot of ways, and most days my head hits the pillow with a lot of shoulda, woulda, coulda floating around before I fall into dreamland.

Andy’s been working some longs days, which are always such a good reminder of what a great team we are! The days begin to slow, it seems, and my patience dwindles. Sometimes, I just need a little structure from someone other than myself for the kick in the rear to get stuff accomplished!

Enter one of my favorites: Blue Apron. It’s been a while since I’ve written about them — and offered you all some free meals! — so I’m excited to share how helpful Blue Apron has been during our moving transition.

If you’re not familiar with Blue Apron, let me begin by explaining quickly how it works:

meal planning, prep and recipe service with farm-fresh ingredients delivered right to your door
choose between the 2-Person Plan with 3 meals/week and the Family Plan with various options
Blue Apron currently ships to 99% of the United States — always free shipping
Blue Apron now offers a recycling program! You can use their locater to find options near you, or you can return your packaging to be recycled for free through USPS! You can learn more about that here.
no commitment: meals can be skipped at any time

Some of the things I love about Blue Apron:

trying new recipes that then become part of our rotation
- Some of our most favorite family recipes began as Blue Apron week recipes! I love that I can access all the recipes at anytime on their website. They are constantly adding more!
cooking with ingredients I don’t have on hand
- I’m not the best at adventurous cooking when it comes to purchasing a ton of new ingredients or spices I would never otherwise use. What if I hate it?? Then I’m stuck! Blue Apron allows us to try recipes without the commitment: one of my favorite things about this service! Take the chopped chestnuts pictures above. I sure would have never picked a recipe with roast chestnuts before, but now I need to find where I can get them, because we loved this recipe!!
no waste
- I’m admittedly one of the worst meal planners…..ever. I just don’t feel like eating the things I’m planning, so I change my mind and food sometimes goes to waste. Blue Apron somehow turns me into Super Mom for the afternoon, and I always stick to cooking the recipe we have planned for the day.
learning new uses for ingredients
- crisping rosemary and garlic to top a burger? Who knew!
some of my favorite times to schedule Blue Apron:
- right after vacation – it’s so great to have some meals planned and out of the way when returning from being away
- during a move or transition
- after a baby — we did many weeks of Blue Apron after Jones was born!

Up on the menu Tuesday night was this Seared Chicken & Roasted Sweet Potato Rounds meal! I had two of the cutest helpers in the kitchen! Harlow’s friend Eden was over for the afternoon, so we all wore aprons and got to work!

There is something about Blue Apron that makes me feel invincible prepping for dinner — instead of the stress I often feel. So I often end up tackling way more than I plan on, because well, that’s what you do when you feel like Super Mom! So with the girls’ help, we made Swedish apple pie as well!*

*full disclaimer: I’m not super mom. In fact I completely failed at timing when to cook the apple pie….so we ended up finally having the sweet potato rounds towards the end of our meal. Not that any of us besides Jones got to enjoy them though…..he ate. them. alllllll. Little hog. ;)

This little guy woke up to help me prep as well!

I’m often asked if the 2-Person Blue Apron Plan is enough for our family of four. For us, the answer is “right now, yes.” Jones is a pretty big eater, and Harlow is become more adventurous, so very soon, we will probably need to shift to the family plan.

That being said, I typically look ahead to what the meals are that week and grab additional meat to add in. So I may grab some chicken from the freezer, or additional sweet potatoes, and I’ll stretch the meal a bit in that way. It’s worked out great for us!