Have you ever watched a cooking show and heard the chef mention “mise en place”? I’m sure the first time you heard it you thought what in the world is that – I know I did. In french the phrase means “putting in place” or “everything in its place.” In cooking the best way to describe this is to prep everything before starting to cook. For example, the photo above shows my prep work to make Italian Meat Loaf from the Cooking Light Complete cookbook. (One of my favorite cookbooks – review coming soon)! I took the list of all the ingredients and measured everything out. This included dicing onions, and soaking and chopping the…