It's amazing how easily we can believe our own lies. Throughout my many years of school, each time I received an assignment I would tell myself I was going to start it early, and work on it a little each day. And I would seriously, honest-to-God, truly believe that this was what I was going to do. But ten times out of ten I would leave it to the last night. Which I would then spend working furiously, fueled by Red Bulls, cigarettes, and the sudden inspiration that stems from sheer necessity. The fact that I always received high grades on my assignments further confirmed that this wasn’t necessarily a bad method.
Procrastination bled into other areas of my life as well. I would wait until the last minute to pack for a trip. Forget to get my car smog checked before my registration was due. Even wait until I was on my very last pair of contacts before I ordered more. And unlike homework assignments, procrastinating in daily life hardly worked out well. At best, I’d manage to complete the task in the nick of time with a lot of added stress and pressure, but more often, I would miss the deadline and end up paying late fees, or walking around blind for a few days.
When I began to read food literature, and especially once I entered culinary school, this all came to an end. As if by miracle, I completely transformed into someone who was always prepared, never arrived anywhere less than ten minutes early, and dealt with tasks that came up immediately when they occurred. It wasn’t a miracle, but in fact, the concept of mise en place.
There’s a saying about French cooking that the first and last thing in the pan is always butter. Well, in culinary school, the first and last words out of your Chef Instructor’s mouth are always mise en place. Mise en place refers to the state of preparedness- both in the kitchen and in one’s mind. At it’s simplest, it means everything in it’s place.
In practice this means that before you begin cooking a dish, you gather and organize all of the ingredients and equipment you will need so they are right at hand when you are cooking. It means that before service, your nine pans are all filled with the components of your dishes, your station is set up precisely the way you have memorized, and each item on your prep list is neatly crossed off. Most of all it means your mind is clear, and your thoughts are straightforward and focused solely on the task at hand.
Mise en place is the only thing that keeps you from slipping into the weeds during a crazy rush, and it is the only thing that keeps your head from spinning when you have nine orders to fire at once. What this taught me was that even the most difficult of tasks can be accomplished as long as you are properly prepared. That if you look ahead, assess what might become a problem, and prepare for it before it has even occurred, your life will run smoothly.
So, I began to try out the idea of mise en place outside the kitchen. When I had to go somewhere new, I made sure to leave a half an hour early in case I got lost. When I received important documents, I filed them so I would be able to find them later. When I was embarking on a trip, I packed a day early and made sure my itinerary and traveling documents were easily at hand. And you know what? Just like in the kitchen, it made my life ten times easier.
It takes some effort and motivation early on, but saves so much wasted time and stress later that I can’t believe I used to live any other way. Now the approach of a looming deadline isn’t what inspires me; instead, it’s that feeling of perfect assuredness, of knowing that I am ready for anything. Of course, bad habits do creep back up, and occasionally I find myself writing something the morning I’d planned on posting it- like this blog entry perhaps? :)
Until the next bite,
Jenn
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