Homemaking '-101'

a couple of months ago, i had the opportunity to be a home maker, as Anandi was traveling for a few weeks.
I was looking forward to the role with great anticipation.
The first few days were very tense. did not realize that apparently simple things could be very complicated and need attention to a lot of detail.
among the responsibilities was to prepare the breakfast and lunch for the kids.

from choosing what to make, and having the ingredients ready and use the right recipe [to also cater to the tastes of each person], each activity was an opportunity for disaster, and, to prove Murphy's laws.

sure enough, the milk wouldn't curdle in time; the milkman may turn up late; the quantity of veggies would become very less after deep frying; etc etc etc.

so, to crunch time - that would be a great help to get everything ready in 15 minutes in the morning, rather than the hour and half that it took - parallelizing processes was a sudden brainwave.
but, having multiple stoves on, added to the complexity of juggling with multiple stirrers, ingredients that need to be added and of course the time taken to cook each of the dishes.
just when sugar needed to be added to the tea brew, milk would start boiling..

another idea that was suggested was pre-processing or part-processing. why not make the rice the previous night, so that one just needs to mix with the gravy etc to make a flavoured rice the next morning.
that helped saving some time in the morning, but the results were not something that one could show off.. the taste and texture were surely not as it would be, when freshly made in the morning.
so, back to square one.

anyway, a lot of learning: hence the title for the post as '-101'. there was more learning from mistakes..
so, i now know many what-not-to-do or how-not-to-do than what or how to do it.

i am getting another option to repeat the course :-).

will try something more / different, and, share experiences in the blog soon..