If You Don't Prepare for Daylight Savings Time Now, You'll Hate Yourself Later

Daylight savings time is the practice of advancing clocks so that afternoons have more daylight and mornings have less. Although it was originally designed to reduce electric usage, there's controversy over whether it's actually had this effect. Now, daylight savings is primarily used a marker for the beginning of a season and to take care of certain items like changing your clock and changing your smoke detector batteries. You may be saying, "But, Chef Todd! This is interesting and we love the info, but what in the world does it have to do with the art of cooking?"

I'm so glad you asked!

Whether we change the clocks or not, the days get longer naturally. This is a signal for the plants to start getting ready to provide fruits vegetables, herbs and spices for us in the coming growing season. Now we're cooking!

If you have a love of cooking, there are some cooking tasks that you should associate with daylight savings time. The most cooking fun of the year is cooking outdoors. Some might say it's an art form.

As with any artist, some preparation is in order for you to prepare for the season of fun, outdoor cooking. First, to be able to practice the art of cooking outdoors, you will need clean cooking tools.

Let's start outside:

• Inspect and clean the BBQ grill, smoker, and/or your outdoor cookers.
• Look for spiders and dirt.
• Check your gas tank for leaks (put some soapy water on a pastry brush and brush the liquid mixture onto the top of the tank, turn on the pressure…you don't want to see bubbles)

Cooking is a lot more fun when you have enough gas, charcoal or wood chips for your outdoor cooking. It's certainly no fun to run out of gas in the middle of cooking a steak.

As soon as you feel the last frost has come, spend some time preparing your herbs indoors and outdoors. Window box herbs will give you a small, quick start, but your outdoor garden should be tilled and fertilized for the coming season. If you start putting some love into your garden now, you'll be ready for some fun, tasty cooking early in the season.

But your outdoor herbs aren't the only things that need attention for you to have some fun cooking. In my next post, we'll talk about how the art of cooking outdoors also requires some inside preparation.