The Value of Repetition

My daughters have made the same thing for breakfast the past three weekends. I’m not getting sick of it (yet). That’s because the repetition reminds me of an age-old adage.

By Dulce Zamora

Noel is home after two weeks out of the country. Our daughters were so excited to show off what they learned to make. On the menu: spinach and bacon frittatas, maple bacon, raspberry jam muffins, and orange and pomegranate cream cheese with crackers.

I noticed the girls were a lot more efficient and confident about cooking these dishes. This is their third weekend making them. To me, this further confirms the value of practice.

During Christmas time, I helped the girls make more than a hundred chocolate chip cookies and chocolate crinkle cookies as gifts for teachers and friends. My chef friend, Bonnie, shared with me her chocolate chip cookie recipe. She gave me lots of tips like (1) Take out the butter and eggs ahead of time to bring them to room temperature, and (2) Try to incorporate as much air into the batter as much as possible.

With each batch of cookies, I found myself becoming more and more confident, and the cookies turned out better, too. Repetition helped me become familiar with the procedure, and it gave me a chance to correct earlier mistakes.

Repetition obviously has benefits for many things like playing sports, studying for an exam, or for putting together a blog. The more we do it, the better we get.

Next, I will teach the girls how to wash dishes so they can take that on, and get better at it, too. Then maybe they’ll learn to use less stuff when cooking and baking. After their cooking sessions, I’ve spend a lot of time at the kitchen sink!