Cooking  in the morning…

 

Many years ago, in 1976, Vern and I and the children went to Italy for six months.  We lived in Rimini with my late sister-in-law, Rina.   We had a marvellous time, and I first saw the principle of cooking in the morning.

 

The women of the house, even my old mother-in-law, would get on their bikes and cycle into the city central food market, where they would purchase the food for the family for the day.  They didn’t have extensive refrigerators, and food wasn’t bought en masse, so to speak.  It was a long time before they even had the delights of a supermarket.

 

When they got home, their baskets laden with fresh fruit and vegetables and whatever else we were going to eat that day, they would immediately set about the food preparation.  Never mind that it was only eight in the morning.  Of course, the main meal of the day in Italy was lunch, but the very fact that the women of the family started to work  quickly, was in order to carry out their most important function of the day, which was providing food for their family.

 

From observing them so closely, not that my cooking ever progressed to their standards, I could see clearly the advantages of preparing your meals while you are fresh, and not having to face a horde of hungry people at mealtimes.

 

And so I developed my own version of “Cooking In The Morning”, which I used for years when I was a working mother. And even now, though I am only cooking for one, I still follow this method.  As an older person, you may not think that this is important.  However, I don’t find it any fun to reach lunch time in a totally unmotivated state of mind, stare hungrily and hopefully into the fridge and try to rustle up some food.    Even if you just assemble all of the ingredients for a simple meal in full view on the kitchen table, and place the saucepan on the stove, (but don’t turn it on!!) you can then make an important decision at lunch time. You can either start cooking, or put away all of the stuff on the bench.  I find this to be a great motivator.  In my mind, cooking can also encompass making a sandwich or heating up some soup.  It doesn’t have to be an extravaganza.  For working mums and those with a young baby, this can be sanity saving. Dinner time rolls around and it is usually the time when most mothers are in a state of total exhaustion. The kids are screaming and so on, but you have it all there in front of you, you don’t have to make decisions. Just start cooking the food you have prepared in the morning. I even used to wash the salad greens and put them in a plastic bag, mix a separate bowl of dressing, and then, hey presto, at meal time I would pour the dressing into the plastic bag and give it a good shake!  Instant dressed salad. I would peel the vegetables and put them in the fridge in a bowl of water.   I even used to go to the extent, in my morning preparations, to find all of the crockery and glasses etc, and stack them on the table under a cloth, to stop undesirables like flies. Set the table before you start cooking, as there is nothing like a table set ready to go that confuses the hungry or quells the rebellious.  They automatically think that if the table is set, dinner is on the way.   The more you can do in the morning, the better off you will be at dinner time.

 

Believe me, this really works