Notes or my comments from a full blown comment war on a Meal-prepping post.
Not many (those who are not the primary incharge for the feeding their multi-person household), realize that "Day to day Cooking" involves:
- Menu planning
- Shopping
- Prepping
- Cooking
- Serving
- Storing
- Clean-up
Many of these tasks can be
- prepped beforehand
- delegated to other family members
- outsourced
- or help-staff employed for it
Meal prep is the thing for 2020s Home cooking. The other option being - eat outside food. It’s not 1980s anymore. Menu demands & dietary preferences of today, are way more than in 1980s. Before 2000s, meals were simple options, and everyone in the household ate the same thing in their meals, at the same time.
Most of the opposers don’t understand, that half of these meal preps were being done for decades before microwave or fridge. They are just panicking that mom is not standing in kitchen & serving steaming hot food on their order.
Meal prepping is a broad umbrella term for a lot of food prep activities. Soaking channas & Idli/Dosa batter grains. Jolada Rutti, Thepla. Chopping vegetables in train on the way home. Pounding masalas & Pudi. Making Dal Bari, Sandige, Papad & pickles. Making Dahi, butter & cream. Just peak in your previous generations kitchen. It has always been done - depending on the availability of fridge, Sun / dehydrator and other resources.
People who have only boiled a Single serve Maggi want the home-cooks to slog infront of hot-stove in summer. Women at leisure is a scary thing. They are just scared they wont get served a beautiful plate while seated on sofa in front of tv, and loose the chance to crib and nit-pick that plate.
People are not worried about the nutrition of the food. They are worried their Server will go missing. All the nutrition-destruction myths about microwaves, fridge & pressure-cooker have been long & widely debunked.
So many of the Indian food taste better after a day or two - Puran poli, Sambar. Cold rice recipes are its own section in every Indian state. Maad-bhaat, Chitranna, Puliyogyre and the chic Fried Rice.
If there is no ready food in fridge, the non-cooks of the house will order from outside. They wouldn't dare to cook from scratch. While eating outside, no one extolls the value of pink-salt or fresh vegetables. Everything goes. But for argument sake, they will crib about restaurant food not being as good as home food. And at home, they will crib about menu being bland and not like restaurant food.
If the argument is that love, romanticizing and human element will be lost from food, then I have this analogy. Accounting ledgers, paper files, red pencil editing, typewriters - they are all such romantic aspects of accounting and writing. Yet computers and AI changed those processes and now look how fast and convenient Banking Financials and writing are both for makers and consumers. If kitchen appliances, AI and Robots, will free the 50% of the population from drudgery, then so be it. Actually they have made a difference in the commercial kitchens. Let the domestic kitchen benefit as well.
There is a FB group call "World of Washing" where everyone shares their clothes drying in open pics. They also share artworks and stories related to washing. Someone had shared this story about her grandma and I will paraphrase it here. She was pregnant with her 5th kid and she had always hand washed and dried her household laundry. One day, while she was in the middle of washing, she got her pains, so she was moved to hospital. In between she told her husband to just finish that wash and dry else it will smell. She stayed in hospital for 3 days. When she came back home, there was new washer & dryer installed ! She had hand washed her bones dry for decades, while he just had to finish one wash and he realized the drudgery and bought the appliances.
Meal prepping doesn't reduce cooking time. It reduces mental load and hangry emotional meltdowns. It streamlines the home-cooking assembly line so home-food is available for every meal.
Each of these steps are complex:
- Menu planning -
- Consider available grocery & ingredients.
- Every members dietary preferences - based on taste, health, allergy.
- Special events - festivals/holidays, birthdays, parties, travel
- Shopping -
- to stagger variety across the week.
- Special items for festive occasions.
- Special items for birthdays
- Party planning
- Prepping -
- vegetables chopping
- soaking grains for idli, dosa batter
- soaking legumes - rajma, channas
- Cooking
- stirring on the gas-stove part or oven
- Serving
- plates, katori, cutlery and glasses
- make food available buffet style in kitchen or on dinner table
- Storing
- pack foods in different boxes and store in fridge or pantry
- provision for next meal
- Clean-up
- wash all cooking vessels
- move used dishes from dining area to kitchen sink
- wash all used dishes
- dry washed dishes
- pack dry dishes & vessels back to their place
- clean dining area - table, placement mats
- clean stove & kitchen platform and other cooking areas
