Preparing Ahead...

Today is shopping day for the Erbes. We try to economise and have found the best way to ensure we only buy the food we actually eat, is to preplan a weekly menu. Now we may not stick to it 100% but it’s a good starting point.
The second step of “Preparing Ahead” is, yes, you guessed it, to actually prepare your food for the week’s menu once you’ve bought it! Its much more convenient to open the fridge to find chopped up pineapple chunks and orange segments than it is to have that daunting task each day of preparing those healthy ingredients and you’ll be less likely to reach for that tempting chocolate you store at the back ;-)
With the menu planned and the shopping done I’ve been busy in our kitchen, chopping and prepping our fruit and veg, but also baking bread as I know I’ll have the oven on for all the roasting and grilling I am planning to do. Here’s the tasks I set myself this morning:-

Finely chop red cabbage – braise half, store the rest

Braise red cabbage with apple and balsamic vinegar

Chop pineapple into chunks

Segment oranges

Grate carrot

De-seed the pumpkin and soak the seeds, chop pumpkin and roast

Slice, salt and grill an aubergine

Slice and grill courgettes

De-seed & grill red & yellow peppers

Bake bread

I’ll start with the cabbage and get that braising, then the carrot, pineapple and oranges, followed by the pumpkin as the seeds will need time to soak before roasting. Then the aubergine so I have some soaking time, followed by the courgettes and peppers which I can put under the grill straight away. Then for the bread dough which takes about 10 mins to prepare. By the time I’ve finished with the dough the cabbage will be part braised and can come off the hob to cool before refrigerating. The peppers have been charred and placed in a bag ready to remove the skins when they cool and courgettes are grilled and cooling. The pumpkin and seeds can then go into the oven to roast. After about an hour the pumpkin will be done, the dough will have risen to the knocking back stage and the aubergine will be ready for the grill. When they are finished the bread can go into the oven and all I have do is sit back and enjoy the fruit smoothie I prepared using the freshly cut pineapple, banana and frozen strawberries.

Prep time – 30 minutes
Cooking time – 2-2.5 hrs