The Importance of a Plan

When I talk about time, I must also talk about planning. This is one of the biggest obstacles that makes cooking difficult, and it is an obstacle of our own creation. We don’t plan ahead. It’s five p.m., you’ll be leaving work shortly, and it’s your turn to cook dinner that night. “What am I going to make for dinner?” This can be a roadblock. Even though you knew you were going to be needing to make dinner on this night. You simply failed to plan.

I fail to plan all the time. I try not to, but life can get busy and suddenly it’s seven o’clock. My friend Russ Parsons, journalist, author, and former food editor of the Los Angeles Times, once criticized my suggestion that roast chicken was a great weekday meal (when my kids were young, I roasted a chicken every Monday night, which would then give me some form of chicken soup later in the week or chicken salad for lunches). He maintained that by the time you got back from the store, it was too late to preheat the oven and roast a chicken.