Excited, since I've wanted to try this for a while, I unpacked the box with the same gusto that I did my Pampered Chef consultant kit - everything was shiny and new and exciting and I was going to cook like a chef now for sure! (tools help, but I learned a lot with this)
or.... I wasn't. Not being one who follows the recipes, but taking into account that I was trying a service that assumes you don't really know a lot about cooking (as evidence by the detailed instructions and the pictures that accompany every step) I decided that I'd follow the recipe to the letter and let the chips fall as they may. I shouldn't have - really. I made a chicken pasta dish and ended up with a dish so bland I couldn't finish it. Neither could my partner. I augmented dinner with marzipan rosewater cookies I'd made over the weekend and he augmented dinner with popcorn.
It was plain. It was boring. It was lacking all spice. (I added garlic and red pepper flake as I was cooking for fear of it being too blah. it didn't help)
So tonight I decided to try again, and made the second recipe in the box: An Indian fish and rice dish, heavy with onion and ginger. The recipe has a quarter head of cabbage in it. I made it to the recipe, adding only salt and pepper as the spice packet they included was considerable.
I should have added more curry.
It wasn't bad, it was light for all the frying in it and the rice was tasty (I added a pat of butter to that one) and the crispy onion was a nice addition. In a fit of inquiry, I went and looked up this recipe online, searching specifically for Indian versions of this dish. Mine had an egg scrambled and added to a pan of hot oil and ginger. Everyone one I found had hard boiled eggs. Mine had cabbage. Theirs have parsley. Mine had rice made per the bag. Their had rice sauted in oil and with onion added, then covered in boiling water and covered to steam up. Mine used cod fried in oil. Theirs used haddock poached in milk with bay leaves.
I'm going to make this again, I'm going to add more curry, and I'm going to make it to their recipe, not the one that came in the box.
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So in all this cooking (and I have one more to go, pork sandwiches that I'll be making for myself on Friday) I've discovered that it's not so great a thing to have the ingredients picked out for you in this manner. I've been gifted food before, notably pieces of a farm share, and I haven't felt the same total detachment that I felt with these ingredients.
My partner and I are paid into a farm share ourselves this year, and I'm incredibly excited about this! Knowing that someone, however rushed they may be, is working a farm and then packing up a bag of farm share for he and I... they care about the land they're working, and they're doing something about making sure that healthy food makes it out into the world. I can't say that I feel that with this service. I don't know what I was expecting, but this wasn't it. Live and learn!
So in these days when you want convenience, and you think fondly on the possibility of food arriving on your doorstep that isn't takeout from the Chinese place, think long and hard about your relationship to the food in question. I would never have bought the pieces of chicken presented to me in that package - they were fatty, and that's not something I look for in my chicken. We're kitchen witches, and very simply that means we want a more profound relationship with our kitchens and the dishes we present to our loved ones to nourish them. I think I apologized 10 times last night for how bland dinner turned out. My partner just laughed and smiled and said "well, now we know that's not what we want to get into!" He's wonderful.
My garden outside is growing, and my seeds for the herbs and veggies are sprouting soon, and slowly the list of what I need at the grocery is shrinking. It's a wonderful feeling.
May it be for you.
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