Take Notes When You Cook

One of the best advice I read on cooking, especially when starting, is to take notes.

This helps tremendously, especially when one does not cook that frequently (say, maybe annually?)

Things to take notes on:

• recipe details (never know when you want to cook the same thing next year!)
• weights of items used
• preparation times
• cooking start/end time
• actual items
• any substitutions used
• and most importantly: results!

I usually cook during the holidays and reviewing my notes from the years before help me tremendously in:

• deciding what to cook
• shopping for items
• preparing recipe

This advice on cooking I remember reading from the introduction of Alton Brown’s book: Good Eats Volume 1. He and The FoodNetwork dramatically improved the way I cook.