I think at this point of time after almost 3 months in the house, the novelty of lockdown cooking has worn off for most of us. I was never an enthusiastic cook in the first place so cooking for almost 3 meals a day has really been taking its toll. To avoid the monotony and resorting to just eating pizza for every meal, I have been using some tricks and tips to make cooking during lockdown an easier process although lets be real, its always going to be a chore.
My main aim has been to make and eat food I enjoy, eat relatively healthy and not long too much for fancy restaurant food. I have to admit I have been craving eating out. I especially crave Thai food, Nando’s and Vietnamese food – basically the kind of food that is almost impossible to replicate at home. Anyway, lets not go into that right now or I might start drooling.
Batch Cooking
Logically we have more time to cook so we should not be batch cooking right? Now I am not not talking about the slightly fancier meals to make weekends special, its normal easy meals to get us through the day that are a pain. We are also working from home so arranging lunch becomes quite an issue so batch cooking in this instance is really needed.
1. Pasta: I know – hardly revolutionary, right? Honestly, I am not a big fan of pasta but yes, its an easy meal. To make it even easier I make a lot of sauce in one go and save it in a bowl. (I find the readymade sauce too sweet). Anytime we want to eat pasta, I just cook the pasta and mix it with the sauce and its done. Its also a really good way to use up almost rotten tomatoes.
2. Indian food: most Indian food is shared so perfect for batch cooking. We use up all the veggies we get and make a huge bowl of sabzi and dal which can be used for lunch throughout the busy weekdays.
3. I love vegetables but the chopping is quite tedious. I just chop them in one go (while listening to some great podcasts) and keep them in fridge for when we need to cook them.
Avoid Waste
4. My friend recommended this and its such a great plan – make vegetable stock. Use the peels from veggies you make and boil them to make veggie stock instead of buying store bought stock which has excessive salt. You have all the time in the world right now.
5. You can also make ‘chips’ with vegetable peels. Just bake and put some sea salt and its a great snack.
6. The other thing I do is actually not peel veggies at all. For instance, in most cases (except when I use boiled potatoes because it peels off by itself), I don’t peel any of the veggies and use unpeeled ones. For instance, carrots, sweet potatoes, etc are used unpeeled.
Set Meals
This is not something I ever did pre-lockdown but having set meals for set days is very comforting. It establishes routine but also helps you look forward to somethings which is especially important right now. For instance, our Sunday brunch of akuri or dosas is something I have started really looking forward to. It puts me in a good mood to have breakfast food l love and sets the mood for our whole Sunday. I also have designated days for take out. This is usually either Friday or Saturday. I also try and avoid takeout to the extent possible since I don’t feel comfortable reusing the takeout packaging and feel guilty throwing it out.
Make It Easy
Buying groceries in the current situation comes with its own challenges. Make it easy to the extent possible. I have continued to buy my veggies from the Ted’s Veg in Borough Market and other things from Tesco and Holland and Barrett. Get one of those veggie boxes like Riverford or Wonky Fruit and so on if you can’t manage the shopping every now and then. I tried out the recipe boxes as well (you can see some reviews on my Instagram) but honestly, felt the plastic and wasteful packaging was too much to deal with long-term. But if you are stuck in a rut its a good idea to try one of these out if only to stop resorting to take-out too many times.
Resources
I will post again if I think think of other tips and figure out other ways to make lockdown cooking easier. Some great resources for recipes and other foodie tips are below. These are website I usually use and others that friends have recommended:
- Gusto Recipes – this one of those sites where you can just pick an ingredient and get a recipe based on it. Its a great way to ensure you don’t waste groceries.
- Kitchn.com – a friend introduced me to this website. Their photos are gorgeous and such great tips.
- Veg Recipes of India – every Indian sabzi you can think of is here.
- Madeleine Olivia – you may have heard me mention her before. I started following her for her zero-waste content and ended up loving her food recipes as well. I have made a lot of her soups and oats based recipes and they are excellent.
- Pinterest: honestly, there is no better resource than Pinterest for cooking tips and recipes.
- Our food section: this is not objective at all but some of the recipes on our food section are yum. I love this chicken recipe and these are some great lunch options while working.
Hope this post gave you some ideas for lockdown cooking and was a little useful. I will definitely add more tips if I think of any others I use. Its been a stressful couple of days and I have been unsure on what to share on the blog. Hope you are all ok and taking care of yourselves, physically and mentally. if you have any questions or suggestions, I would welcome this. Comment below or on Instagram or Facebook.
– Anisha
Leave a Reply