Orange Beef Lo Mein

Pregnancy + morning sickness throughout the pregnancy = not much cooking. First because the energy required to cook was nonexistent, second because I wasn't much in the mood for eating, third because I didn't want to get sick on it.

Then: baby came out, my appetite returned, and Blue Apron finally had a menu in which all 3 meals looked good. So this week we got Blue Apron again, the first since November. Tonight I made the first meal: Orange Beef Lo Mein. Sounds good, right? Too bad for the husband and I. We've had better. Both when dining out and from my own kitchen. Sigh.

Started by prepping all the ingredients when Doug and Roland were at swim lessons. Asher (the new baby) was happily asleep in his swing so I took the opportunity to spend some time in the kitchen all by myself. Notice the sippy cups drying, the glass of beer (my very own homebrew), and the Nalgene bottle (Mama's gotta stay hydrated). It was quite nice to cut everything up and then put each ingredient it its own place. Finally, some cut and dry order to something (we haven't had that since we brought the new baby home). Plus, it's nice to start with all simple, easily identifiable ingredients and finish with a meal.

There were a few things during cooking that I thought could have been skipped. First - putting oil in the pan to cook the ground beef. Unless this was super lean (the package did not indicate), I really don't see a reason to oil a non-stick pan to cook ground beef. Pretty sure it has enough fat on its own. Second - wiping out the pan that I did put oil in, just to add new oil to cook the veggies. Maybe you're trying to avoid meat fat in favor of plant fat, but all I saw was a paper towel with a bunch of flavor on it. Should have read the directions closer, I definitely would have skipped that step. And third - using salt and pepper to season the finished dish. It was already cooked with soy sauce, why not use more in lieu of salt? Both are salty, but as the dish already contains soy a little more will probably be okay if you want salt. As it is, I rarely cook with extra salt, so I did skip the salt in this case, and we added soy sauce to taste when we sat down to eat.

Some additives might have been good here too: red or yellow bell pepper or thinly sliced carrot would have been an improvement both in flavor and appearance. And neither would have interfered with the flavors already in the dish.



And the finished meal. A little blurry, and boring to look at. Don't worry. It's not just boring because it's blurry. It's actually a boring looking meal. Did I do something wrong? Are my plating skills total junk? Do I need better dishes? Maybe. Or maybe it was a boring dish to look at. All the veggies were green or white. There was an orange when I started, but since only some zest and the juice are used there is no color. But it still smelled decent, we were hungry, and it was what I made for dinner.

Sadly, I won't be making this again. I will be looking for the main seasoning, or attempting to make it myself. It smelled awesome, and could have used more than came in the box. The ground beef was nice. But overall, this isn't something worth making again.

Meatball Subs and Salad

Tonight we tried our second meal from the Blue Apron box. Meatball Sub and Salad. The recipe is here if you're interested.

Again all the ingredients needed came in the box, except for the olive oil and salt. There was a ton of salad, we didn't finish that. The subs were HUGE. Hard to see with the pic I took, but each one took up an entire plate. I couldn't finish mine, and that was sharing with a toddler who thinks it's his job to eat as much as possible off of my plate.

While salad was pretty good (basic salad but with homemade dressing) the subs were not great. Doug finished his, but we both agreed that there could have been more seasoning. And the meatballs were plenty big enough, even though I made the mixture into 10 meatballs instead of 8.

I think if I were to make meatball subs again I would use my own recipe for meatballs - even though this had Italian seasoning in it, it pretty much just tasted like beef. And the tomato sauce could have used a little more seasoning - garlic and onions were a great start, but it needed a little more. Maybe some basil or something. I suppose I had that in the cupboard, but just as when I was making the salad, I thought it would be good just to try the recipe as it was sent - otherwise the salad would have had feta cheese and tomatoes added to it as well (especially since I already had both in the fridge).

So, this recipe sounded good, and the ingredients looked good, but it seemed to need a little more than it came with.