Well, I'm still in the process, that's for sure, so I can't give advice from on high. I do have a couple of things that are working pretty well for me, though.
First, with cooking: A while back, I was trying to help a friend figure out how to cook, because my mom always let me goof in the kitchen so I got a lot of my catastrophic failures out of the way early, and I realised maybe the number one most important thing that I always do--I split the job into two parts. There's preparation and there's actual cooking. And you will be MUCH better off if you get all or very nearly all of the preparation done before you so much as turn on a burner. If you don't have them, get yourself some little bowls (ranging from custard cup size to salad bowl size), doesn't matter what they look like, thrift store would do fine. I even save disposable pie tins--great for grating cheese especially. Then do all the chopping, measuring, even spices if you're going to measure them at all (which I only do if I'm following a recipe, which is not most of the time) into these bowls. THEN turn on the stove/oven/whatever. In fact, some nights when I can tell I'm really phoning it in on dinner, and I don't know what the heck I want to do, I just sort of start preparing...grate this, chop that, smell things, munch scrap ends...and somewhere along the line suddenly I know what I'm doing.
Other than that, I second all the ladies who said to get a cookbook that leans heavily on techniques rather than recipes. And I can't believe I'm pushing a magazine, but it really is worth mentioning that Taste of Home magazine comes with a center insert of good, solid country cooking recipe cards from all the other articles, and generally these recipes are very well worked-out and take a bare minimum of fancy techniques and ingredients. Not always what you'd call health food, though.
As for house-cleaning, the lady who said that she tries always to have a project when she goes to clean a room has a good point. The way I think of it, when I'm digging into a cleaning project, I always try to plan to do just a bit more than fight entropy. If I'm cleaning the bedroom, maybe that's the time to go through the closet and pull out the stuff I'm not wearing anymore. If I'm cleaning the living room, maybe I'll finally hang that painting the cat keeps knocking down. I aim always to do something I haven't done a dozen times before, preferably something that will stay done, you know? Maybe someday I'll reach a point where everything's got a place and a system and all I have to do is maintain, but somehow I think that day is a looooong way off.
Good luck to us all! Wish me luck establishing a good system just in time for the first little one to come and monkey it all up!
First, with cooking: A while back, I was trying to help a friend figure out how to cook, because my mom always let me goof in the kitchen so I got a lot of my catastrophic failures out of the way early, and I realised maybe the number one most important thing that I always do--I split the job into two parts. There's preparation and there's actual cooking. And you will be MUCH better off if you get all or very nearly all of the preparation done before you so much as turn on a burner. If you don't have them, get yourself some little bowls (ranging from custard cup size to salad bowl size), doesn't matter what they look like, thrift store would do fine. I even save disposable pie tins--great for grating cheese especially. Then do all the chopping, measuring, even spices if you're going to measure them at all (which I only do if I'm following a recipe, which is not most of the time) into these bowls. THEN turn on the stove/oven/whatever. In fact, some nights when I can tell I'm really phoning it in on dinner, and I don't know what the heck I want to do, I just sort of start preparing...grate this, chop that, smell things, munch scrap ends...and somewhere along the line suddenly I know what I'm doing.
Other than that, I second all the ladies who said to get a cookbook that leans heavily on techniques rather than recipes. And I can't believe I'm pushing a magazine, but it really is worth mentioning that Taste of Home magazine comes with a center insert of good, solid country cooking recipe cards from all the other articles, and generally these recipes are very well worked-out and take a bare minimum of fancy techniques and ingredients. Not always what you'd call health food, though.
As for house-cleaning, the lady who said that she tries always to have a project when she goes to clean a room has a good point. The way I think of it, when I'm digging into a cleaning project, I always try to plan to do just a bit more than fight entropy. If I'm cleaning the bedroom, maybe that's the time to go through the closet and pull out the stuff I'm not wearing anymore. If I'm cleaning the living room, maybe I'll finally hang that painting the cat keeps knocking down. I aim always to do something I haven't done a dozen times before, preferably something that will stay done, you know? Maybe someday I'll reach a point where everything's got a place and a system and all I have to do is maintain, but somehow I think that day is a looooong way off.
Good luck to us all! Wish me luck establishing a good system just in time for the first little one to come and monkey it all up!
Thx for reporting back, I think Im going to go see if I can find it.
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: customs. (I assumed you were looking at Amazon.com, sorry if you already knew this 
)
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