Cooking



  It is one of the most important, and must do thing for everyday. if you are not working, you can find it rather easy and relaxed, as you have more time to plan and prepare as per the tastes and likes of your family members. But, if you are working, and have to go to early morning to work, then the situation changes to a difficult one. I am saying it as ' difficult' , and not as ' impossible'. Here I can give you some tips that i have experienced and tried out in my own life and have seen and heard from others also.

  • planning what to cook for the day- (choosing the meal)

  This  is the first step in proper time management in the kitchen. Mos of the people think about what to cook only when they reach their kitchen, most probably at early morning. Thus, some precious time is lost deciding whatever to cook, and collecting the ingredients and chopping veggies etc. You can really save this time by prior planning. I am not talking about having some time spent from your tight schedule at office just to plan about your meals. you may find it impractical. I am telling the 
 'naturally  non creative' time that you get when you are in a queue before a ticket counter, for the tickets for bus,train etc. or the time that you take to travel to office or back to home., or it can be the time you are waiting for a client to appear, or you are waiting for a general meeting in which you don't have any important presentations to do etc. This particular time that you get differ from person to person, thus you can find your suitable time.

   Think about the meal plan for the next day-[if you get more  time, plan for the next one or two days also :)  ]. That may include the breakfast, lunch, snacks for your kids school tiffin, and the dinner. plan for the breakfast first. as you know, it is the breakfast that keeps us more active and healthy through out the day, you cannot skip making and eating breakfast. In modern lifestyle, people has changed to accept corn flakes , bread-butter/jam etc for break fast. but, if you have elder people with you, they may prefer 'nadan' food items. In Kerala, the usual breakfast items are appam, puttu, dosa, iddaly etc. They should be accompanied my any of the side dishes like egg curry, kadala curry, coconut chutney, sambar etc.
    If you have more time, then you can plan two different curries for breakfast and lunch. if it is a very busy day, you can choose the side dish so that you can  use the same for breakfast, lunch and may be for dinner too.
    For the lunch, in kerala it is the rice, that most of the people like to have. There can be two dishes minimum. A 'thoran' or ' mezhukkupuratty' and a curry. The curry can be Sambar, Moru curry etc. If you plan for Moru curry, make it a bit more so that, you can use it the next day also. The fish curry can also be used like this. That can prepared in the last night rather than in the morning. 
    For the dinner, there may be leftovers of some of the food items, and you can plan and cook if you need to when you are back at home.

  • get the ingredients stocked beforehand, so that you don't have to worry for the missing of any of the important ingredients.
when you are making the whole planning, think about if there is all the required things available at home, if not you can buy them as you are on the way back to home ( very important use of planning on the way back to home) . It is preffered that, you have to keep a small notepad and pen in your kitchen so that you can write down whenever you find one ingredient is going to be over. Thus, you save time to prepare the long list when you go for shopping. , and this can avoid missing any one item.
   
  • wash and chop the vegetables and keep in refrigerator.
Courtesy- Shutter stock

As you have already planned whatever food to make, and got all the things for the preparation, then you have to wash and chop the vegetables before hand. If you are getting some time on weekend, then use some time to wash well and store the vegetable etc in the fridge. this can save a lot of time in a busy morning. If you chop the vegetables, meat or fish and keep in boxes and store in refrigerator, it will become more easy for you. 
  • make masalas and coconut gratings in a weekend and store in refrigerator.
 when you are making a curry , that need some gravy, you need to get the coconut paste.and for the thoran items, you may need coconut to be grated. This is also needed for making puttu also. if you are going to crush the coconut and grate and grind it at morning, it may take some more time. But you can make use of the extra time on holidays or weekends to make this  coconut paste (either fried or in raw form) and other masalas it will save a lot of morning time.( you can use this extra time for other activities). The coconut will not spoiled if it is grated  and stored in plastic food containers. you can put the rice for making appam or iddaly, at the morning and grind it and put aside for fermentation at the night itself.
  • follow a usual pattern every day

Some people will have a confusion on where to start, and which item is to be ooked first. then you can make regular pattern, considering a smarter order. for e.g, you can start with tea, and at time of boiling of that, you can start washing and cooking the rice.On  having a cup of tea, you can take all the vegetables chopped, and coconut gratings or coconut paste, and whatever things that you need to take fro your fridge. you can take the batter for ;appam' , iddali or dosa, that you have preapred and fermented in the night. you can use pressure cooker for saving a lot of time in cooking. you can cook the chopped vegetables for the curry or mezhukupuratty in the pressure cooker, with a little amout of water and after the required whistle, you can keep it aside from the stove and use the cooktop for the next food item. You can prepare appam, puttu or what you like to eat for breakfast. Even before you finished with the breakfast item, the pressure cooker will be ready to open. Thus you saved the 'waiting time' to open it. In this way, you can n mange time for each item.
  After the cooking there may be a lot to be cleaned.  You can keep a wastebin at the corner of the kitchen so that, you can put the tits and bits of the vegetables and ingredients, at the same time you preparing food. No need of devoting a full time in to it. there will be a  few no of dishes, plates and utensils to be cleaned after cooking. My suggestion is to use minimalism, use minimum no of utensils and try to complete the washing of dishes the morning itself.
  • plan what to do with the leftovers
If there are leftovers, and if it is more you can use it for the next day or for the evening or night. some left overs can be improvised to a new dish, and can be utilize the full of it. plan accordingly.
  • Decide the meal according to available time for preparation also.
courtesy- shutterstock

when you decide about what should be prepared at morning, consider the preparation time that it may took also. The inchikkari, ullitheeyal, payasam , and fish curry will take more time so you can do it on a holiday or weekend or if you get time at night. 


 thats all for now, I will update the post very soon!!. bye