Organization

Organization is a really important step in cooking any meal, especially if your crunched for time.  I have found that breaking the directions down and writing a list of every single little thing I need to do helps me to account for how much time I need to cook the meal.  For example, if I was cooking a fancier dinner than usual for friends who were coming over at 8:00, and this dish had about 55 steps (keep in mind these are really little steps), and if, say, 10 of these steps take 10 minutes, and the rest take 5, I would need to start cooking at 3:00 or even earlier to account for all the little things such as messing up, taking a phone call, and taking short breaks.  This is really useful information to know, because you wouldn't want to accidentally start cooking at 5:00 and have the food not ready when the friends came over.  Try this out!  I promise it will be helpful!