I was reading a post on this NY Times food blog yesterday and it talks about a technique called mise en place. What that means is having having everything measured and ready to go before you start baking or cooking something.

Um, I don’t really do that. I do make sure I have all the ingredients I need, and usually I will get them all out and set them on the counter, along with some measuring cups and a mixing bowl and whatever else I am going to need. But I don’t generally measure stuff out ahead of time. The exception to this is if something that is normally refrigerated is supposed to sit out at room temperature — I will pour the necessary amount of milk or buttermilk or whatever into a measuring cup or cut a stick of butter, instead of leaving the whole thing out.

Making sure you have all the ingredients you need before you start cooking seems kind of like common sense to me, but perhaps it is not?

Anyway, this entire episode made me realize I may not be giving you sufficient explanations with my recipes. Those of you who do not cook regularly may be particularly confused, and baking can be problematic because there isn’t usually a lot of room for error or experimentation. 

I will start posting some explanations for how to measure things properly and trying to add more information and notes to the recipes. But please let me know if you are having problems, or if you make something and it turns out weird. You can comment on the actual recipe, or e-mail me at eatswimshop (at) gmail (dot) com