Measuring Ingredients

Four piles of taco seasoning.

When you're measuring out multiple instances of an ingredient, I highly suggest separating out each measurement.  This might save your dish later on.

In my photo you can see an example.  I browned up my ground turkey for tacos and I needed to measure out four tablespoons of taco seasoning. (I use Penzey's Bold Taco, it's a little spicy and so tasty!  Plus not as salty as the packets.)  I made four separate piles of each tablespoon rather than dumping it all in one big pile.  That way if I was interrupted by my toddler son, the phone ringing, the dog barking at the doorbell, etc.I can easily see my progress.

Plus sometimes my brain wanders when I'm in the middle of something boring like measuring out water for oatmeal and I have no idea where I was in counting...  "Was that cup number four or was I just thinking about it being next?"  I even count out loud in hopes of not losing my place, but it doesn't help.  At least with oatmeal it's not too big of a deal since it'll either come out drier or wetter than I had hoped, which can be fixed.