Blue Apron: our in-home date night

A few months ago we kindly received a free trial week of Blue Apron, a convenient food delivery service that sends 3 meal ingredients for you to prepare at home.  What we loved most about the meals is it gave us a chance to cook with and eat ingredients we would never purchase at the store (I'm talking to you fennel).  Last night we gave Blue Apron another go of it and made the Thai Chicken Burger meal.  I love how this service can turn into a stay at home date night cooking class and you get 3 two person meals for 60 dollars...and....as I mentioned the priceless gift of no grocery shopping!  In the end, we came away with a delicious, "home made" meal, and to boot, we learned how to make something new.  Winners all around in this house.  If you want to look into Blue Apron for yourself click on over here.  Check it out:

Each individual ingredient arrives labeled along with the step by step directions, including pictures on how to do each step. 

 

After dicing and mixing all the ingredients to form the two chicken patties, we were all set for the stove top!

 

Just waiting on that chicken patty to be done!  These ingredients came in their whole form and we chopped them up to garnish the chicken burgers.  

 

The scene of the crime!  I can say that we made a bit of a mess with this meal.

 

Our Thai Chicken Burger before I devoured it.  For the record, it was delicious.  We both decided it tasted like something Chick Fil A would make if they added an Asian inspired chicken sandwich. 

Per usual our Sous-Chef was on hand to "help" with all the cooking. We think she may have helped a bit too much since she woke up with a rough tummy.

 

Most importantly, we are proudly flying the Black and Gold with the start of football season and happily excited to know the Deacs are 1-0 after the first week.  We shall relish that for as long as we can. 

Weekend Review

Any weekend that begins with puppies and ends up with steak is a good weekend to me, but I think that goes without saying.  We were lucky enough to have some adventures together this weekend, including lusting over a new car.  Here is what we were up to this weekend:

We began our new activity together as volunteers with the Charleston Animal Society by participating in Volunteer Orientation for Saturday morning.  We are still waiting for our next steps but are overly excited about getting to help animals find good homes.  I think this volunteering will really allow us to use our individual talents to help Charleston Animal Society and we can have some fun together while doing it.  It will also fend off my constant desires to have MORE animals in our house.

Following orientation we headed to the Ford dealership to check out the Ford Explorers they have on hand, a car that is on our "want but do not need" list. Naturally, we left without the car, but still lusting a bit over it. 

 Sunday afternoon saw a new attempt to grow some plants around this place! We will see how long this container garden flourishes in our yard.   I have big plans for fall vegetation on our porch, so here is my last ditch attempt at giving our townhouse some curb appeal for summer 2015.

...and now I will bring you to the portion of our weekend where I was left taking photos of our food.   As a wedding present we were very generously gifted a dinner at Halls Chophouse here in Charleston, which also lands itself on our Charleston Foodie Bucket list and earns me the ability to delightfully check this off!  We have nothing but glowing reviews of our food and service at Halls!  From the second we arrived to our exit, we were treated very special and made to have an amazing dining experience that we will never forget.  But most importantly...I bring you #photosofourfood

 Shrimp and Grits was my entree.  The husband got the bison with a side of Macaroni and Cheese!

 A chop salad to top all chop salads of my life!

 The dining staff gave us free champagne to celebrate our newlywed status.  Cheers to Halls!

 Complimentary, celebratory Peach Cobbler (with candle) to celebrate marital bliss!

 Dress is from Vestique/ Earrings are Stella and Dot (old) /

And at the end of the dinner and weekend, we all felt a little bit like this after that delicious and filling meal.  Cheers to the thoughtfulness of our dear friends!

Publix Sea Food Bag Dinner Night

In an effort to eat new foods and meal plan for our weekly dinners together, Rich picked up the Publix Fresh Seafood Bag on our most recent grocery trip. Publix makes dinner so easy with this new deal.  They assemble the meal for you in a special bag that makes sure all the ingredients are fresh and flavorful.  You get to select the flavor you'd like to have it from this list of options: