Whether you’re driving, writing a book, planning your financial future, or cooking a new recipe, looking down the road can prevent a lot of problems. Remember learning to drive? Most new drivers focus just in front of the hood leaving every approaching danger out of their field of vision. Watching them attempt to navigate is terrifying.
The stakes aren’t as high when you’re cooking a new recipe, but the end result may be frightening if you’re out of a key ingredient or fail to temper the eggs. And it can slow down the process if some things aren’t prepped in advance. This can sabotage a timeline that would put everything on the table at the same time.
When I was in 7th grade, you had to take either Home Economics (Family and Consumer Science) or Science. The year prior, my family had dinner at the Home Ec teacher’s house. After we arrived, she sent her husband to the store to get some ingredient she didn’t have. It was a lengthy wait for the food and none of it was done at the same time. When it came time to choose a class the next year, I chose Science.
And I practice the backward timeline across all endeavors. Yes, it seems cumbersome and like a waste of time when you’re in a hurry to get started, but I promise it’s worth it. It’s the equivalent of looking down the road when you’re driving.
With cooking, this means reading the recipe and compiling an ingredient and utensil list prior to going to the store. If you’re planning a whole meal, you’ll also want to go backward from serving time to make a plan for when to put each dish in the oven or on top of the stove.
I have a single oven, so I have to factor in oven temperature and cooking time. Some dishes can be cooked at a lower temperature for longer without affecting the quality. That means I can adjust time and temp to cook two items at the same time so that they are both ready to serve simultaneously.
There’s a bit of an art to making these adjustments because the more you put in the oven, the longer it takes everything to cook. And sometimes, you’ll need to switch a dish from the top rack to the bottom in the middle of cooking so that it will cook evenly or brown properly. Don’t worry if you don’t know exactly how to do this the first time. Just use your senses and check things more often.
Making a plan that anticipates and orchestrates these adjustments will make cooking easier. You can make a visible timeline or a list – whatever works for you. And it can all be in your head if you like a memory challenge.
Last Thanksgiving, I had a clogged drain that required two plumbers in the kitchen while I was cooking. I couldn’t use the sink at all. To say that was distracting is an understatement. But I had a timeline in my head and managed to get everything done and on the table at the same time except for one item I totally forgot until everything else was done.
Luckily, it was a quick item I was doing for the kids so there was no disaster. The adults were able to fill their plates while I finished up. I’ll also say my execution was less than ideal, but if I had not had a plan, it could have been a total chaos!
I’m not cooking today. I’m working on other things here at Cooking2Thrive. I still have a plan. I may get interrupted. There may be unanticipated delays. I may have to pivot. But it will be calm. Chaos will not reign. And progress will be made.
That’s the advantage to looking down the road.
You never know what treasures you’ll find among the trash when you begin to clean out clutter. I’m sure the reason most of us have clutter is that we think too many things are treasures. Marie Kondo is making sure we know how to see the difference. But when we clean out an incapacitated or deceased relative’s home, we don’t have the luxury of choosing what is saved. We only have the opportunity to discover treasures among the trash.
