Food 'n' Photos

I’ve been talking way too much about photography recently, so it’s probably time to get back to the Food part of Food ‘n’ Photos for at least one post. I used to get myself in a right state when cooking with stuff all over the place, and a lot of stress being released through banging, crashing and swearing. Then I found the secret to home kitchen zen – preparation, preparation, preparation.

To greatly reduce the risk of any cockups, I do the following for any recipe that I’m following or pulling together from  the deepest, darkest recesses of my mind:

• Go through required ingredients at least twice and make sure they’re in the house or on a shopping list
• Check the ingredients again
• Read/recollect the recipe several times to make sure I don’t forget anything
• If it’s a complicated recipe or if there are multiple parts to a meal (e.g. Christmas dinner) come up with a running sheet with timings and a brief description of what needs to be done. Refer to recipe book and page number if relevant
• If there’s a lot of preparation to be done, do it as far ahead of the meal is possible/practical. Wherever possible, try to make sure that cooking time is only use for assembling ingredients. This is particularly important if there’s a likelihood that you’re going to cock something up as this will only add to your stress levels and raise the likelihood that whatever you’re making is going to turn out badly
• Enjoy your meal!