Incidentally, about pre-prep...

[conuly]

There's always somebody who gets their dander up, saying that "prepare" means to make something in advance, that's what the "pre" means, and so "pre-prepare" is redundant.

And they're right, kinda, but all the same I'd like to direct their attention to the fact that prepare (literally prae-parare) already means to pre-prepare, so I'm not being redundant, simply witty and maybe a little overfond of etymology.

Besides, pre-prep has to do with preparing to prepare, and it actually means something different anyway.

Comments

[conuly]

No.

Pre-prep, in this case, meant doing all the things I needed to do before I began preparing my food. It meant getting all my ingredients neatly laid out, and chopped, and organized so that cooking was simpler. The actual prep-work, then, would be using them and taking out those things specific to one recipe rather than used in nearly all of them.

Everything was made from scratch, with the exception of the canned beans (which were canned, and THEN cooked from scratch - coulda soaked dry ones, but I didn't get to it in time).

I think it's one of those words you have to use to know, because I'm stretching to find a definition, but I know I use it.

[packbat.livejournal.com]

Oooh, that's good. You're not preparing, because you don't have a specific objective - recipe - in mind, but you're getting things ready so that preparation later is easy.

That seems hard to work into a dictionary definition. :\

[conuly]

Indeed. The only way to do it is to drily point out that I'm not preparing, I'm doing those things that need to be done prior to preparing. I'm preparing to prepare. But that's not very good.

[packbat.livejournal.com]

Hmm - well, to steal riff off of Merriam-Webster (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/prepare): to pre-prep is to make ready for a general class of activities [edit:] such that preparing for any specific activity is easier.

[conuly]

That *is* good!