It is one of the most important and must do a thing every day. 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 outside, and have to go 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. Most people think about what to cook only when they reach their kitchen, most probably in the 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 the office just to plan your meals. you may find it impractical.
I am telling the ‘naturally noncreative’ 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 the 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 a 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 breakfast, lunch, snacks for your kid’s school tiffin, and dinner.
plan for the breakfast first. as you know, it is the breakfast that keeps us more active and healthy throughout the day, you cannot skip making and eating breakfast.
In the modern lifestyle, people have changed to accept corn flakes, bread-butter/jam, etc for breakfast. but, if you have elder people with you, they may prefer ‘nadan’ food items.
In Kerala, the usual breakfast items are appam, puttu, dosa, idly, etc. They should be accompanied by 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 maybe for dinner too.
For 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 be 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 about 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 home ( very important use of planning on the way back home).
It is preferred 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 shopping. , and this can avoid missing any one item.
- wash and chop the vegetables and keep in the refrigerator.
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 beforehand. If you are getting some time on the weekend, then use some time to wash well and store the vegetable, etc in the fridge. this can save a lot of time on a busy morning. If you chop the vegetables, meat, or fish and keep boxes and stores in the refrigerator, it will become easier for you.
- make masalas and coconut gratings on a weekend and store in the refrigerator.
when you are making a curry, that needs 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 in the 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 idly, 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 confusion about where to start, and which item is to be cooked first. then you can make a regular patterns, considering a smarter order.
for e.g, you can start with tea, and at the 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 from your fridge.
you can take the batter out for; appam’, idli or dosa, that you have prepared and fermented in the night. you can use pressure cookers 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 amount 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 manage time for each item.
After cooking there may be a lot to be cleaned. You can keep a waste bin 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 into 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 in 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 leftovers can be improvised to a new dish and can utilize the full of it. plan accordingly.
- Decide the meal according to the available time for preparation also.
when you decide about what should be prepared in the morning, consider the preparation time that it may take 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.
