Emily's Hot Dish

One of the most difficult challenges for me as a cook is preparing a meal with multiple dishes and ensuring that everything finishes at the right time. It's frustrating to spend hours in the kitchen, only to have the mashed potatoes finished 45 minutes before your roast comes out of the oven. 

When I'm doing a large meal, I'll schedule out the big things that take a long time, then look at the pockets of time I can prep other dishes. The only trouble I run into is remembering to start everything at its scheduled time. Enter the iPhone. 

Using the calendar feature, I set myself "appointments" with an alarm at the times that I needed to perform various tasks in the kitchen. For example, at 5:15 my phone told me to "put chicken in oven" and at 6:15 I set another reminder to "remove lid from chicken." My only complaint is that the alarm can't be set to go off at the exact time of an appointment - the closest you can get is 5 minutes before. I got around this by setting the appointments for 5 minutes after, then setting the alarm to ring 5 minutes before. Another work-around would be to set all the appointments at the correct time the next day, and then set the alarm for 1 day before. 

It takes a bit of effort to plan everything out and set your phone to alert you, but I think you'll find that the resulting organization is more than worth the effort. You'll be able to get your entire dinner on the table at the same time, and you won't forget to start the rice!