Delivery

Green Blender: Blend it Your Way

Published on December 11, 2016December 11, 2016 by The Crimson CraveLeave a comment

By Joseph Winters ’20

I love smoothies. Smoothies in the morning, smoothies for snacks, smoothies before bed—there’s no bad time for a smoothie. At home, they served two main functions: 1) they were a good way to eat more greens without even realizing it, and 2) they helped my family reduce waste by allowing us to use whatever fruits and veggies were lying around in the fridge, a little past their prime but still edible.

The ultimate dream would be for Annenberg to have a smoothie station, where students have anytime access to a fridge full of fresh ingredients and a quality blender. Unfortunately, that isn’t quite the case. As freshmen, we’re pretty much stuck with using whatever blender we can find in the dorm kitchens, or renting from the FDO.

Not to mention, the ingredients! I’ve swiped my share of bananas from Annenberg, but most smoothie recipes call for teeny amounts of things like chia or hemp seeds, apple pie spice, fresh ginger… Without frequent trips to Whole Foods, it’s hard to imagine being able to stock the right smoothie ingredients all the time.

That’s what GreenBlender can help with: they deliver weekly smoothie boxes, complete with prepackaged and portioned ingredients that go with five recipes (two servings per recipe—so ten smoothies per week). I was intrigued, so I emailed GreenBlender, and they agreed to send me a box in exchange for this review!

Here are the ways you can subscribe to GreenBlender:

Fresh Start: a week-to-week subscription for $49/box
- $4.90 per serving
Monthly Challenge: a monthly subscription for $176
- $4.40 per serving
Healthy Habit: a one-year subscription for $468
- $3.90 per serving

My box arrived just before Thanksgiving Break, so the recipes were all Thanksgiving-themed. The ingredients were meticulously packaged in plastic baggies, with convenient labels for things I might not recognize, like maqui powder. Plus, I really appreciated that they weren’t the stereotypical smoothie recipes that you might find at some pseudo-health smoothie place, laden with just fruit and yogurt and honey or syrup; three of the recipes had greens, one had a summer squash, and one used sweet potato. No nauseatingly sweet stuff here! Also, everything GreenBlender sent was organic, which I thought was a great feature of their service.

Here are the five smoothies, with my comments:

Maqui Apple Cleanse

This smoothie was surprisingly delicious. It wasn’t too sweet, but very refreshing. I mostly tasted the applesauce, but the grapes gave it some tartness. The squash made the consistency a little fibrous, but that would have been remedied if I’d just blended it for a minute or so more.

1 yellow squash, chopped

5 oz grapes

1/2 cup applesauce

1 tbsp hemp seeds

1 tsp maqui berry powder

1 cup water

1 cup ice

Maple Almond Apple Pie

Many health foodies are familiar with the concept of the “açai bowl”, which is basically a really thick berry smoothie. But I don’t think the açai bowl needs to limit itself to açai berries as a base; I like to make “smoothie bowls,” which are basically smoothies with less liquid. That’s what I decided to do with the Maple Almond Apple Pie recipe that GreenBlender sent. I put all the ingredients into the blender as normal but omitted the cup of water. Into the blender went:

1.5 oz baby kale

1 tsp apple pie spice

2 apples, chopped

1 tbsp maple almond butter

1 cup ice

If you don’t have a powerful blender, I’m not sure this would work, but Vitamixes and Blendtecs should do the job handily! The consistency was a little meltier than frozen yogurt, and while it didn’t taste like a real pie, the apple pie spice definitely gave the smoothie bowl some holiday flavor, and—of course—the kale was undetectable.

I like this smoothie-eating method particularly because I could never drink only a liquid smoothie for breakfast—I’d be hungry within an hour. This way, I get some more carbs from toppings like granola (and a scone on this particular morning!), and a healthy schmear of peanut butter makes it a little more like an actual meal.

Cranberry Ginger

While it wasn’t bad, this smoothie was probably my least favorite of the smoothies I sampled. It was the kind of smoothie someone might accuse of tasting “healthy” in a derogatory way. “Healthy” is a taste I’ve acquired and come to like, but it’s definitely not for everybody. That being said, it still made for a nice smoothie bowl breakfast. I would have added more ginger than the tiny slice that came with the ingredients, though, since I could barely tell that it was there.

1.5 oz spinach

2 oz cranberries

2 dates

1 pear, chopped

1/2 inch ginger

3 tbsp walnuts

1 cup ice

Pineapple Kumquat Passion

When I think of classic smoothies, this is what I think of. Super citrusy, pleasantly sweet, and deceptively green-colored. It was the first smoothie I made, and I shared it with one of my friends. She even woke up for a nap just to share in the smoothie-making. Both of us agreed that it was a quality sip of Vitamin C.

I also commented that GreenBlender helped me control my tendency to shove about five fistfuls of greens into the smoothie in the name of health. Doing this usually makes the smoothie extremely fibrous and completely unsatisfactory—with the recipe they provided, the smoothie had just the right amount of greens: still tasty, but with a healthy boost.

1.5 oz swiss chard

3 oz kumquats

1 orange, peeled

4 oz pineapple

1 tbsp chia seeds

1 cup coconut water

Maple Glazed Sweet Potatoes

This was the smoothie I was most excited to make. I love sweet potatoes, I love smoothies—what could go wrong?

4 oz raw sweet potatoes

1 banana

1 tsp cinnamon

1 tbsp maple syrup

3 tbsp cashews

1 cup water

1 cup ice

The outcome was amazing—sweetness from the banana, spice from the cinnamon, sweet potato-y goodness from the sweet potatoes. As with many banana smoothies, this kind of tasted like a milkshake. In fact, it was so good that, after my GreenBlender trial, I looked up the recipe and bought all the ingredients at Whole Foods so I could make it again. The second time, I had some extra coconut milk on hand, so I subbed it for the water and got a super dessert-like, creamy consistency.

After my week of smoothies, I was pretty sold on GreenBlender. I recently did a review of the meal delivery service Plated, but my conclusion was that it didn’t make sense for undergraduates on an unlimited, mandatory meal plan. GreenBlender, however, might make sense for those who are already devout smoothie lovers. They ease the difficulty of having to find quality smoothie recipes, go to the grocery store to find the ingredients (where you might have to buy a huge container of maple syrup even if you only need a tablespoon), and haul them back to your dorm kitchen.

Also of note is the fact that GreenBlender publishes all its smoothie recipes to its website! It’s definitely worth checking out, especially some of the candy bar-themed smoothies. Even if you don’t purchase your own subscription to GreenBlender, you can still make some killer smoothies from their enormous recipe index!

Website: https://greenblender.com/

Use the coupon code CRIMSONCRAVE when paying for a 20% discount from Green Blender!

When The Food Feels Too Far Away, Order In

Published on February 22, 2016February 29, 2016 by richachatLeave a comment

by Audrey Thorne ’19

There are lots of reasons to order in. Sometimes the winter cold is just too much to venture into. Sometimes the walk is daunting. Sometimes the restaurant in question delivers in under an hour and the trek there and back would take the same time, so it just seems easier to order in. And often, the ordering method that allows me to give the maximum detail for what I want so that I know I will get what I want and the minimal time spent sounding awkward on the phone wins out.

The first day I attended Harvard summer school in 2014, my parents took me out to a thai lunch in the square. That late afternoon I dined in Annenberg with my roommates. That night I made an account with Seamless. I was still craving the delectable fried rice I had eaten earlier that day. Not really wanting to spend money on food with a free meal plan, it took two weeks for me to break down and order again.

Seamless has a multi layered filtration system for finding new food places, with star rankings that I have learned to trust. I did not use that the first night, though, because the night I first ordered from Seamless I just wanted my Spice fried rice. Living in union dorms for the summer, I was able to enter a real address, ask the deliverer to call me upon their arrival. After an hour, an unknown number popped up on my food. I hurried excitedly downstairs. The delivery man told me he had been waiting for almost ten minutes. Apparently the instructions to call up were not well translated. I did get my food, still hot, in the estimated delivery time, I just felt bad because the poor guy had waited for me downstairs in the time it would have taken for me to walk to the restaurant. I ordered three more times during the summer, and each time the message to call was poorly translated. Otherwise, the delivery service was just as advertised.

Coming from New York and not having tried to get food delivered from anywhere except the thai place that I did not know no longer delivers, I assumed most places would deliver. After being in Cambridge for a few months, I found that the usual call and deliver method is rather unpopular. Many of my favourite places do not have their own delivery service via a phone line and often they do not even deliver through an online service like Seamless.

At the end of last semester, however, I was made aware of DoorDash. I downloaded DoorDash for the sole purpose of having places that did not normally deliver, deliver. Offering ASAP or a specific time delivery while the restaurant is open, and pre-orders for the next day once the restaraunts in question is within an hour of closing time, DoorDash boasts selections such as Liquiteria, Au Bon Pan, JP Licks, Dumpling House, and Felipe’s. On the easy-to-use app, DoorDash advertises times between thirty minutes and two hours for delivery. Skeptical of if the $5.99 fee, excluding tip, would be worth getting Felipe’s in 50 minutes, I waited for DoorDash’s time to come.

Reading period, after watching the hours blend together as I got not as much work done as I had hoped in Lamont, I decided it was time. I would not have to take a break from working and I would get to eat one of my favorite foods, so it was a win-win. I watched the delivery process unfold on my phone through the order tracking portion of the app. 23 minutes after placing my order, my phone started buzzing. On the other end was a man telling me he was downstairs. I grabbed my ID card, speed walked out of Lamont, and ran to Greenough. As I approached the entrance I heard a man in a long coat holding a brown bag ask “Are you Andy?”

“DoorDash?”

“Yes.”

“I am so sorry for taking so long. I was in the library.”

“Next time just put in that address and I could take it to you.”

“Really?”

Despite having several times been told that the perk of living in Greenough is that it’s outside-of-the-yard address makes food deliveries possible, DoorDash actually delivers to Harvard buildings. One can put the name of a dorm into the app and it will come to wherever one is on campus in less than the predicted time. My burrito arrived as warm as the welcome of my DoorDasher, and the food was what I had ordered online to a T.

Still, I wondered if I was on the best food delivering website. GrubHub I have found to have almost the same options as Seamless, just three fewer options at 20 restaurants. Offering solely restaurants I had never tried before, GrubHub pushed me to try new foods and delivered in the expected amount of time. With fees varying by restaurant, from free to $3, GrubHub is worth considering.

Overall DoorDash has my favorite options and I found Seamless and GrubHub hardly distinguishable. If all three have the food one needs, Seamless and GrubHub have the lower fee and still get the delivered in the estimated time. However, if I am craving a late night burger from Tasty, or a tasty smoothie while Lamonstering, DoorDash is the only option, and it is a great one.

“Some ‘Ting Nice” to Eat

Published on February 15, 2016February 15, 2016 by br126Leave a comment

by Audrey Thorne ’19

My insatiable hunger for Jamaican patties stems from a visit to my friend John (often identified on campus as Jamaican John) over winter break and has remained for so long, largely because of the inaccessibility of Jamaican food in the states. Though he found my addiction to jerk chicken and Jamaican patties comical during my visit, after a little pestering, he has since come to my rescue by showing me his favorite Jamaican place in Massachusetts.

All the way in Somerville, Some ‘Ting Nice Caribbean Restaurant delivers to Harvard dorms online and through Door Dash for a small fee. With an expansive menu written partially in Jamaican Patois and partially in other Caribbean Patois languages, Some Ting Nice is a Caribbean gem that I am amazed John was able to find outside of the Harvard bubble.

doordash-square-red — Picture from DoorDash Website

Less than half an hour after pressing the order button for the most quintessentially Jamaican dishes I could find, Door Dash delivered an order of two patties with coco bread, jerk chicken, and sides of both fried dumplings and rice and beans, often referred to as rice and peas.

First we cracked open the jerk chicken. Throughout my time in Jamaica I stuck to what John considered the “bad” jerk chicken, flavourful but unspicy. In comparison, the spicy, mouthwatering collection of white meat chicken reads as far more Jamaican than the jerk chicken I ate in the country itself. John, unenthused by American food in general, even conceded that Some ‘Ting Nice’s jerk chicken “can pass” for Jamaican.

Saving the patties for last, I decided to try the sides. Fried dumplings dubbed “unlike an actual fried dumpling” by John were indistinguishable to me from real fried dumplings as a non-native. Fluffy inside, crispy outside. They perfectly complemented the jerk chicken, contrasting the intense authentic spice. I also found the rice and beans tasted best mixed in with the flavourful jerk chicken sauce.

Last, and most highly anticipated, I cracked open the patties, one chicken and one beef. Upon unwrapping my patties I discovered the consistency largely varies from that of a Jamaican patty, being solid rather than flakey on the outside. Disoriented, I ventured a bite. The chicken tasted much like an American meat patty, and though delicious, did not quench my thirst for a Jamaican patty. I decided to try the beef patty. Perhaps this one will be the one, I hoped. Yes. Once my teeth penetrated the solid outside, the Jamaican influence in seasoning the beef became palpable. Though the outside texture was different, the consistency of the meat in this patty was the same as those I was eating just a month ago. Wrapped in a plush cocobread, I was transported back to eighty degree weather and sandy beaches.

Some ‘Ting Nice really is something nice to eat when you feel like taking a break from your regular spots in the square.