So last night, in cooking for for Chris and Holly, Shannon and myself for movie night, I did all the prep first... I got the onion, jalapeño, and etc all chopped up and ready, took a little break (very little, it was much later then I thought it was) and then cooked.
It was quite enjoyable. I needed onions, right in the pan, no, "Oh crap I gotta chop this real quick", so was much more relaxing. I read a lot about it in Anthony Bourdain's Les Halles Cookbook: Strategies, Recipes, and Techniques of Classic Bistro Cooking, and it made sense.
It was like a nice little calm, doing the prep. rinse rinse, chop chop, rinse rinse, chop chop...so pleasantly mind emptying...
The only issue with this was that I used 6 or 7 bowls, which...since there were bowls already dirty, made it kinda hard to serve dessert (we ended up using Shannon's soup cups).
I made a vegetarion pasta from the July issue of Fine Cooking. It was uh...orecchiette (a pasta type) with green beans, corn, onion and jalapeño (or something like that). Turned out fantastic! Combined with some garlic butter on some bread from La Mie, fantastic meal.
We finished it off, with the very last of the Dark Chocolate Chocolate Chip Ice Cream and combined it with the Green and Black's White Chocolate with Strawberries ice cream...which was also fantastic. I think I have a new favorite brand of ice cream...though it is a bit expensive.