Wednesday 2 October 2013

Prepping for Prep Day

While back in Glasgow, I got inspired by several blog posts on slow cooker meals and freezer cooking and started turning Wednesdays into my day to spend in the kitchen prepping the meals for the next week. This worked brilliantly in making sure we actually ate proper meals on days when I was either busy with uni or just too plain lazy to spend time making dinner.

So, after my first, initially terrifying and overwhelming, few trips to a couple of Dubai’s hypermarkets as well as our local supermarket, I built up the courage to attempt getting to that level of organisation with our meals again.

My first step was to get the cook-books out. I keep hoping I can be the kind of person who actually uses cookbooks instead of just ooooh-ing and aaaaaaah-ing over the pretty pictures, then ordering a pizza. Which is why I –ever the optimist- got my cook books out this time and made the effort to actually look at the recipes seriously. Then, just as a bonus, I even added a couple recipes to my meal-list.*


My second source for recipes and inspiration is my pinterest food board. This is where I have gotten pretty much all of my recipes from so far. I’m not the best at actually following recipes though, which is how I end up calling something Cilantro-lime chicken despite chicken being the only common factor between what is on the plate and the original recipe. Nonetheless I have found some recipes that I love to use –with a few alterations here and there-  all across the inter-web and keep them safely stashed on my little pinterest board.

Then ensued the most exhausting grocery shopping trip of my life(so far anyway). I am gradually learning that Friday evenings are not a time to go anywhere in Dubai, and Carrefour in Mirdif City Centre is no exception. I had walked in mid-to-late afternoon, so things were relatively average. Then, as time went on and the trolley got heavier, the crowds got larger, thicker, and noisier. Until there came a point(more than once) in the fruit and vegetable arena where I just had to stand and patiently wait for the throng around me to resume it’s flow in order to get the chance to move my trolley. This entire situation was not helped by how many people had their kids controlling the trolleys, which is fun when you can look and think: ‘Look how cute it is they’re helping!’ Not so fun when you have three boys rein acting Mario Kart scenes in your way.

But anyways, the trip was a success! We got home with everything that was needed – as well as a sneaky drive through dinner from Hardy’s. Then with the groceries put away, I  went on to stealthily procrastinate into pushing my looming prep day further into the future and out of this blog post.

No worries though, it will be covered soon – not sure if I can bare the wait… can you?

*I have to admit that at some point between adding pinterest recipes to my meal list and making the shopping list, I crossed off both of my book sourced recipes… it’s the thought that counts though, right?

**No need to wait, here it is!

1 comment:

  1. Wow, I tend to forget there are such things as hypermarkets when I'm living on my wee island. No doubt you'll get used to them though. And there's nothing wrong with internet recipes. I've been doing some hunting online for easy egg-free recipes. We've made chocolate cake twice now (better the second time, we're learning how to improve it) and it's certainly helping me get over my "I hate food" attitude I developed when I felt like I couldn't eat anything any more. We also made our own awesome pizzas a couple of times thanks to inspiration from you. So thank you for that! =)
    It sounds like you're pretty well organised. Good luck with your preping, and I hope your future shopping trips are a little less traffic-jam-y.

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