Mise en Place

'Mise en place is a French culinary phrase which means 'putting in place' or 'everything in its place.'

It is cold and rainy today so I decided to bake a cake. My interpretation of mise en place  is getting out all the ingredients ahead of time so that nothing is forgotten . 
I even figured out how to put the oven in my stove on 'convect'. I was beginning to think the Italians were better at designing cars than kitchen stoves since setting the oven temperature is anything but an exact science. (Because my stove is red, it was painted in the Ferrari factory in Modena, Italy, which is also home to Bertazzoni Appliances.) 

The cake came out beautifully, but the glaze, which I forgot about while I was trying to figure out how to put the oven on 'convect',  burned spectacularly, filling the house with so much acrid black sugar smoke that we had to leave charge out into the cold, coughing and trying not to breathe....OilMan took the pot outside and left it on the ground. I haven't gone out to find out if it can be resurrected. If it can't, which I fear is the case, it will be a pity, because the humble little Revere Ware saucepan was a wedding gift. Imagine how many kitchen disasters it has survived since 1963.

So much for mise en place...