KITCHEN PRACTICE 2 — Set Up a Mise en Place Station
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TASK
Pick any simple task — chopping vegetables for a salad or a stir-fry
works well — and organize a proper prep station before you touch a
knife: board positioned, knife ready, small bowls for each prepped
ingredient, a trash bowl within reach. Then actually do the prep and
notice whether it felt calmer than your usual approach.

WALKTHROUGH

Step 1 — Choose the task.
Something with 3-4 different vegetables works best for this exercise —
e.g. an onion, a bell pepper, a couple of carrots, and a stalk of
celery for a stir-fry base.

Step 2 — Set up the station BEFORE cutting anything.
  - Cutting board positioned on a stable, non-slip surface (a damp
    kitchen towel underneath stops it sliding).
  - Chef's knife within reach, on the board's non-dominant side.
  - One small bowl per prepped ingredient — not one shared bowl. Onion
    goes in bowl 1 the moment it's diced, not "onto the board pile with
    everything else."
  - A trash bowl (or an open bag) right next to the board for peelings
    and offcuts, so scraps never touch the clean prep area.
  - Everything you need for THIS task within arm's reach — nothing you
    need mid-prep should require walking across the kitchen.

Step 3 — Do the prep, one vegetable at a time.
Finish one ingredient completely (peel, cut, into its own bowl, board
wiped or scraps cleared) before starting the next, rather than having
four half-prepped vegetables on the board simultaneously.

Step 4 — Notice the difference.
Compare this to how you'd normally approach the same task — usually
some mix of chopping while things are still in their packaging, hunting
for a bowl mid-task, or discovering you're out of counter space because
scraps have piled up. The organized version should feel calmer and
noticeably faster, precisely because every decision (where does this
scrap go, where does this diced onion go) was already made before you
started cutting.

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WHY THIS MATTERS
This is mise en place in miniature — the same principle professional
kitchens run on, scaled down to one task. The value isn't really about
this one vegetable prep; it's building the habit of organizing before
you start, which becomes essential once real recipes with multiple
simultaneous steps show up from Chapter 6 onward. A recipe that asks
for "the diced onion" partway through a step is assuming it's already
sitting in its own bowl, not still on the cutting board mixed in with
everything else.