I’m sorry, Mom.  You were right.

Now that I’ve apologized publicly to my saintly and long-suffering mother, I will proceed to eat my words.  Would you please pass the ketchup?

When I began cooking, I relied mainly on my nose.  I could tell when the food was almost done by the way it smelled.  That method worked for several years…until I had children and my nose became exclusively tuned to various baby smells.  I could detect spit-up three rooms away, but I could be working in the kitchen without noticing the billowing smoke rising from the skillet next to me.  In fact, I was often so tired that I couldn’t remember what I had put into the skillet to begin with – or when!  I needed help to get back on track, so I decided to revisit my culinary roots.  Who better to help me than my own mother and grandmother?  As long as there was no mention of a timer, we’d get along just fine…

…you see, I tormented my mother for years.  She would pop something into the oven and ask me to set the timer only to be heckled by her own offspring.  "Set the timer?"  I’d sneer, "You’ve made that a thousand times!  Can’t you remember how long to bake it?"  "Just wait – someday you’ll eat your words!" she’d reply.

Growing up, I viewed Mom’s timer as a crutch.  Grandma didn’t use one - she had The Knack!  What I didn’t realize was that Mom and Grandma were using variants of the same method to produce consistent results.  Through trial and error, both women had developed a system that worked for them and in the process became best friends with one indispensable device:  their time-keeper.

Grandma’s time-keeper was her watch.  She kept a mental log of the time it took to prepare each dish, and she would work back from there.  "Lets see…" she’d say, looking at her watch, "the roast will be done at 5:30, so I need to peel the potatoes at 4:00 and turn the burner on at 5:00.  When the potatoes reach a rolling boil, I will start cooking the green beans and set the roast aside to rest.
I’ll mash the potatoes at a quarter ‘til and we’ll eat at 6:00."  And, like magic, supper would be ready at 6:00.

Mom worked a bit differently; she didn’t wear a watch, and she frequently got sidetracked by one of her many on-going projects.  To stay on track, she would note the prescribed cooking time of a particular dish, set the timer, and move on to another project until the alarm sounded.  She often had more than one timer running to keep tabs on different foods.

Both Mom and Grandma paid special attention to cooking times.  This was one of my biggest faults.  In relying on my olfactory sense to tell me when the food was done, I’d missed making mental notes.  I couldn’t recall how long it took for the rice to reach a boil, or how long to bake the winter squash.  I had been flying by the seat of my pants, so to speak – and that wouldn’t cut it with little ones vying for my attention and energy.  What I needed was something to help me focus on the task at hand – something to call my attention back to the meal I was preparing.  I knew what it was, but I didn’t want to admit it.  Not that!
Surely something else would work…I felt defeated, like I was admitting I couldn’t handle the simplest of tasks.  Reluctantly, I pulled out the timer my mom had given me years before and sat down to identify my greatest areas of weakness.
From there, I formulated a plan of attack and dug in for the long haul.

Step One of my plan was to note how long each step of preparation and cooking took.  I noted how many vegetables I could chop in 15 minutes, and how long it took for the lentils to get soft.  Soon, I had a good idea of how to implement Step Two, which was to use the timer to alert me.  I was often so exhausted that I would forget I had started cooking – I needed a loud reminder to check the progress of the food before it reached the point of no return.

After a few days of consistently using my timer and taking notes, I noticed something:  I was spending much less time trying to remember things, and I had a lot more mental energy.  Hmmm, I thought, maybe Mom was on to something…

A few weeks later, my timer and my notes had moved from "crutch" status to my new best friends.  Knowing how long it would take to prepare and cook supper gave me the freedom to actually get it done on time – and having an alarm to get my attention meant meals would be spared the Black Death of the past.  I was one step closer to becoming Queen of the Kitchen again, and to celebrate, I baked a Quiche.  Perfectly.