Here is what I do. I make one side dishes and one gravy for two days Sunday evening. I also make buttermilk alternate days. Then everyday during the weekdays I work, I make a single quick side dish or a gravy mostly vegetables, this way I always have a fresh dish. I am not a big fan of too many days refrigerated and frozen food. It makes a lot of difference to have the food fresh daily.
For lunch box, I take buttermilk (which I prepare the previous night) in a bottle to mix the rice with the side dishes. I also drink the rest of the buttermilk, which is a great cooling and also a good stimulant for digestion.
Though I make the side dish the previous night, I cook rice in the morning. I cannot even think of eating rice made the previous day and refrigerated. I am very particular about that. I cook rice in the pressure cooker along with the morning tea and by the time I am ready in half an hour or so, I get cooked rice hot and fresh.
I use the Indian casseroles (or food flasks) as lunch box, which keeps food hot. I heat the side dish and take the buttermilk and my lunch box is ready. This way I don’t have to microwave the food in the afternoons. I don’t like that too. :)
Now, butter milk is a life saver. Seriously! It won’t stink like the gravies if you take lunch to office. I don’t normally take gravies like sambar to office.
This is how to make buttermilk. Crush1 tsp of ginger, 1 sprig of curry leaves, 1 green chili. Then mix 1 cup of water to ¼ cup thick curd and mix with enough salt. Add the crushed ginger etc to this and leave it in the refrigerator the previous night.
That’s it. A sneak preview to my lunchbox.
6 comments:
That requires a lot of discipline to cook daily Inji..
Is there some telepathy working..? I was thinking of writing about buttermilk for almost 3-4 days now and here you re !!!
Hey inji pennu, My mom used to make it often and I always loved it. Now I wonder why I never tried such an easy recipe. Thanks for posting it. Mom used to add 1 or 2 crushed "kunjulli" to it along with the other ingredients u mentioned. That also tasted very good.
I also cook daily (unless I am traveling for work). It relaxes me, and I find I feel I am starting to feel lik I am living a "fake" life if I don't cook regularly.
I have never had this, but will give it a try. I like yogurt rice and this seems a bit similar.
inji, you mean 'sambharam,' ok ? i thought you make real 'moru' every night ! even i, in kochi, don't do ! you do know how to make the real 'moru,' do you ? if not, here it is - buttermilk, ideally, should have no trace of butter. what i do is this - take the curd in the ordinary mixie bowl, the largest one, with the whipper blade on, and give a whizz for around one minute. then, leave it there for some time, prob. 20 min or so, then, spoon out the thick foam that has collected on top. if you want to preserve the home made butter, or, want to make ghee, ladle it into a bowl of boiled and cooled water. otherwise, just discard. finally, pour the buttermilk through a steel seive (arippa), to make sure that no trace of butter remains. this will keep in the refrigerator for some days.
during summer, even if i can't walk, i try to make moru weekly, at least. the big boy at home loves to drink tall glasses of moru at all times. (a quick cure for hangovers, tip for boys !).
great to read about your making lunch. reminds me of my own initial days of working in kochi !
I am also a working woman/wife in Ireland, and here also I have noticed ppl's jaw dropping when I say I do cook daily.. I felt odd, when others found it abnormal..now reading this, I am happy that I am normal.. :-)
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