A Nice Day
I love that Tommy Womack song, A Nice Day. There's something about it that always wants to make me cry, but not necessarily sadly. It came to mind because yesterday was, indeed, a nice day. An almost perfect day in some ways. The skies were so blue and the air so warm that I know we weren't alone in succumbing to a bit of spring fever. Ernie and I went outside and started cleaning up some of the garden beds---the things we were supposed to do last fall. Then I summoned the boys out, easier said than done, but got them out eventually. They raked and burned some of the brush and then we just ended up sitting in the yard for hours. Ernie and Owen ran to the store and fixed the wheelbarrow which has been sidelined for mmmm, a good several years now. Leo and I chatted and looked at old pictures of our house when it was yellow and teal. Owen wants it back to those colors, Leo and I say no. Regardless of color we need to paint one of these days. I pondered what I want to plant this year and we all, even Leo, just drank up the sun and the breeze.
As the afternoon wound down Leo and I went inside to our computers and Owen and Ernie went and did some cleaning in the garage. Eventually they came in too and we sat and laughed together. In talking about dinner Ernie mentioned skewered chicken and Owen screeched "SKEWER? I don't even KNOW her!" and we just laughed helplessly. It's all in the timing and that boy has it.
I tried to convince Owen to help me cook dinner, but somehow it evolved into Ernie and Owen cooking and I would serve. Owen found this hilarious because generally I cook and make them serve. I thought it was a great plan so curled up in the living room and read while they cooked. We tried Blue Apron for the first time this week, and based on two meals anyway, we LOVE it. I'd never actually been that intrigued by it (it's meal delivery service) but my boss has been doing it and she has loved it and she's a hardcore food person and after talking about it with her I decided to give it a try. It's not cheap and yet when I sat down and really thought about our grocery bills and how much food we waste it ended up making sense. The one thing about it that made me cringe a bit was the environmental aspect of getting your meal shipped. I sat down, and in my own obsessive way, read up about the company and read a number of reviews. I came to feel that the issue isn't as big a barrier as I though...between their commitment to recycling, using family farms, using less packing early on in the process.....enough to make me willing to try it for a bit. We are doing the family plan, for 4, twice a week. It comes out to $8.74 per serving. That's more expensive than most meals I make, but not all, and certainly is far cheaper that you could ever get in a restaurant for that quality. And there's no waste....I throw out leftovers or dessicated vegetables far too often, and if you really factor that all in, it comes out to be quite reasonable. The meals for two are $9.99 each and you get three meals a week. The family plan is either two or four times a week. Four would be too often for me, but two works out nicely. You can also start and stop and skip weeks whenever you want. With our two meals a week we get a choice of four options (according to what we check off---meat, shellfish, vegetarian, etc.).
Look what a disaster our kitchen is. Please tell me that your kitchens look like this sometimes too.
With all of one week under our belt we are kind of tickled with it. We shall see. It's really smartly done and packaged with clear directions, and the quality of the ingredients was fantastic. The first night Ernie and I made pork and ricotta meatballs with broccolini over polenta. It was amazingly good and we had a LOT left over. Last night Ernie and Owen made za'atar chicken skewers with mint yogurt sauce with roasted broccoli and pearled couscous with apricots and almonds. What intrigues me is the fact that Owen said he kind of liked the couscous and didn't mind the yogurt. Now, if I-I-I-I had planned that meal....I can assure that would not have been the response. With this meal we ate all the chicken because Ernie and Owen are chicken fiends but we had couscous left over. I love cooking, but not necessarily every night, and the choosing of what to make and getting ingredients is by far the hardest part, so having two days a week where it's just there....very nice. Oh, and you can get two free servings with your first order, just fyi. I sound like a commercial, don't I? We shall see how it goes. A little bit of reading and lazy tv watching (still binge watching all the Top Chef Masters episodes) and the last of a very good batch of homemade chocolate chip cookies.
So a nice day. A nice day.