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How to be more efficient in the kitchen

October 2, 2026 | View in browser

By Cody Reiss

Cooking Editor

I’ve always been a chaotic, disorganized cook. If I’m not careful, even the simplest meals can leave my kitchen looking like a disaster zone.

But one day, about six years ago, I learned a lesson that has helped me temper my more frenetic tendencies.

I was in Oakland, helping my friend Caleb Peyton — a former Chez Panisse cook — pick parsley for a catering event. The task was taking me a long time, and I was making a mess, sorting through tangles of half-picked stems mixed in with picked leaves and untouched sprigs. I was flustered.

Noticing my struggles, Caleb came over and gently asked if he could show me a better way to do it.

Quickly, he rearranged the space in front of me and began explaining his process as he made quick work of the herbs.

“The unpicked parsley is in its produce bag on your left, the discard bowl for stems is in the middle, and a bowl for the final picked leaves is on your right. You grab one sprig of parsley with your left hand, pull all the leaves off in one motion with your right hand, drop the stem into its bowl and the leaves into their bowl. No wasted movements.”

No wasted movements.

Caleb wasn’t just teaching me how to pick parsley. He was demonstrating an invaluable cooking principle: economy of motion.

To me, economy of motion means doing every task efficiently, with the least possible amount of wasted time and energy.

Not only can it be applied to every single cooking task you do — from peeling carrots to forming meatballs — but without it, a restaurant’s cooks could never keep up with the massive volume of food they need to prepare.

When I first started at Chez Panisse, I wasted a lot of time.

It took about two minutes of fast walking to get from the prep kitchen to the walk-in refrigerator where the produce was stored. Not knowing any better, I’d take that trip every time I needed a different ingredient. It probably cost me about 20,000 steps and who knows how many minutes a day.

As I became more experienced (and after many days of being embarrassingly behind on my prep), I also became more thoughtful and organized.

At the beginning of each shift, I’d write two lists — “to gather” and “to do” — with every single piece of equipment and ingredient I’d need that day. Then, I’d make as few trips as possible to get everything I needed, piling pounds of broccoli and boxes of mushrooms into bus tubs and hauling them up the stairs to the line.

Every day at Chez was an opportunity to improve my efficiency.

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One day on the pizza station, I was preparing three pizzas at once. Another cook, Raja, noticed me repeatedly reaching for small handfuls of the same topping, each time just enough for just one pizza. He encouraged me instead to just reach once per topping, grabbing a huge handful at a time and scattering them on all my pizzas before returning any extras to their container.

It might seem small, but this move saved me one return trip to and from the container for each pizza. Repeat that across 60 pizzas in a night, and it starts to add up.

You might be wondering why this is important at home, where you’ll often be cooking on a much smaller scale.

Let’s say you’re dicing six onions for soup. Your instinct might be to process one onion, all the way through, six times over. Done that way, you might: Grab your knife; take off any protruding roots and the stem end; cut it in half; put down your knife; peel the onion; grab the peel, stem and root; throw them away; grab your knife again; slice it lengthwise; slice it hamburger style; dice it crosswise; put down your knife; scoop up the onion and put it into a bowl; pick up your knife again; and start the whole thing over again.

Doesn’t sound that fun, does it?

Instead, consider this: Root, stem and cut each of your onions in half. Put your knife down, clean your board, and grab your knife. Cut them all lengthwise and then hamburger style. Then, dice each onion. Put your knife down, scoop up all the onion and transfer it to a bowl.

Sounds better, right?

To practice economy of motion, it’s important to examine each task before you get started and to think about how you can do it most efficiently.

That might mean setting up little assembly lines for yourself, something like Caleb showed me with the parsley: unprepped ingredient -> discard pile -> prepped ingredient.

Assembly lines — a neat breading station, for example, with a plate of your raw chicken cutlets on one side, then next to it flour, then egg, then breadcrumbs and finally a plate to land the finished specimens on — allow you to turn into a uni-purpose, efficient machine.

The beauty of refining the efficiency in your cooking is not only that it helps you stay organized — so you (I) don’t work yourself into a chaotic frenzy and, say, knock over a whole open jug of olive oil — but also that it opens up brain space and allows you to be more creative and present.

As you set into the rhythm of whatever repeated motion you’re doing, you can refine how well you’re doing it, start thinking about your next steps or dream up an additional component to whatever you’re making.

Automate the tedious tasks, and you can focus on the fun parts of cooking.

Eventually, you might start to notice the economy of motion creeping into other parts of your life, too. Perhaps after you put the kettle on the stove, you’ll use the time it takes to boil to brush your teeth. Maybe you’ll find a faster way to put away your laundry. Who knows!

If you aren’t ready to brush your teeth or do your laundry, watch this week’s video and try putting this lesson into practice with the recipes below. See you next week.

Happy eating,
Cody

An Extra-Cheesy Dip With Chorizo And Crispy Parsley

Put your parsley picking skills to the test with this cheesy, comforting dip.
Get the recipe.
Cook time: 20 minutes. Serves 8.

(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)

Nonna’s Meatball Sandwich

Making meatballs at home can be a messy, overwhelming task. Try to put your economy-of-motion hat on and organize each step of the process in a way that’s organized and tidy.
Get the recipe.
Cook time: 3 hours. Serves 4.

(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)

Satirical anti-Trump art in Greenland

October 2, 2026 | View in browser

The anonymous arts activist group Secret Handshake placed a satirical video game called “Nuuk ‘Em All” in Nuuk, Greenland. (Secret Handshake)

By Jessica Gelt

Arts Editor

The anonymous arts group known as Secret Handshake has gone international with its piquant form of satirical anti-Trump artwork, this time placing a playable video game console called “Nuuk ‘Em All” in, yes, Nuuk, Greenland. The group sent a picture of the console to The Times. It sits alone on a barren cliff above the sea, with a smallish iceberg visible in the water below. The peaked roofs of a nearby town can be seen in the distance.

Secret Handshake has created more than a dozen pieces of guerrilla art mocking Trump since last year — all of which appeared on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., until July when a golden, 10-foot tall “Iran War Participation Trophy,” cropped up in New York City. That piece arrived at the Minnesota State Capitol in early August.

Greenland is ambitious though, even for a collective that revels in creating outsize splashes with its work (see the Trump-Epstein “Best Friends Forever” sculpture). Asked via email how the group transported the full-size video game console to the country — which has weathered a series of unwelcome overtures from Trump to become part of the U.S. since he retook office early last year — a representative wrote, “You have no idea — it was honestly very difficult. A true ‘planes, trains, and automo … ships’ situation. Did you know that the arctic is actually quite far? And they’re not used to whipping over arcade games.”

“Nuuk ‘Em All” is the second satirical video game Secret Handshake has released since July when it first introduced the world to “Operation Epic Furious: Strait to Hell,” which finds Trump waging a futile war with Iran while making all kinds of bumbling choices including whether to order a Diet Coke or bomb the country.

The game arrives in Greenland shortly after the Trump administration signed an agreement with the country and Denmark to expand the U.S. military presence in the Arctic while seemingly dropping threats to annex the semi-autonomous Danish territory.

Three additional cabinets of the game were simultaneously placed at the D.C. War Memorial on the National Mall, and can be played online on any old computer. The game begins with an animation of the White House, its lawn covered with cranes and backhoes. “The year is 2026,” the scrolling text reads. “The White House is under constant construction, reconstruction and construction of the reconstruction.”

The action moves to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago headquarters where Trump is approached by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who apologizes for waking Trump from his “tactical nap” to tell him about some “issues with Iran.” Trump asks if the Strait of Hormuz is 100% open and Hegseth replies, “Yes, sir. It’s so open that we’ve used up all our missiles, and gas now costs more than bourbon.”

I haven’t had the chance to play the game for long, but Secret Handshake’s email details what to expect, “In this game, Iran is going great (spoiler — it’s not), so Trump heads north to check on his new frozen frontier. Along the way, he battles unthinkable evils like Fully Vaccinated Children, Woke Yetis, and the happiest people on Earth, the Danish. All the while, the player’s greatest challenge is trying to keep President Trump from falling back asleep.”

Secret Handshake didn’t have any information about how Greenland has responded to the game, with the rep noting, “I think there is a lot of hope and relief over there right now that this agreement is the end of the barrage of bullying and threats from the US. But our feeling—and I truly hope we’re wrong— is that it’s just the beginning. Especially with Trump refusing to answer if an invasion is completely off the table now.”

Regardless of what happens in Greenland, the rep continued, “the thing I really like the most about this new game is that between all the satire, and jokes, and silliness, it actually ends up back in reality — the character is still stuck in an endless loop of war in Iran. And that, sadly, is still just as true as when we released the Iran game almost half a year ago.”

I’m Arts editor Jessica Gelt screaming into the void. This is your arts and culture news for the week.

The week ahead: A curated calendar

FRIDAY

Boston Marriage
David Mamet’s 1999 epigram-filled comedy about two women sorting out their affairs while maintaining their standard of living at the turn of the 20th century. Directed by Bernardo Cubría. With Nicole Pacent, Heather Wake and Dulce Valencia.
8 p.m. Fridays-Saturdays (and one Thursday, Oct. 22): 2 p.m. Sundays, through Oct. 24. European House LA, 12355 Rye Street, Studio City. ticketsource.com

Yvette Janine Jackson With Radio Opera Workshop
The ensemble integrates electronics, acoustic instruments, voice and images to produce new music by the award-winning composer and sound artist. Presented by CAP UCLA in collaboration with the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music and the UCLA Center for Musical Humanities.
8 p.m. The Nimoy, 1262 Westwood Blvd. cap.ucla.edu

The Little Women Ballet in action. (Edie Tyebkhan-Melissa O’Gara)

Little Women Ballet
The dance troupe’s Autumn Immersive Experience brings audiences into the world of Louisa May Alcott through movement amid Victorian Era architecture.
6:30 p.m. Friday, 3 and 6:30 p.m. Saturday-Sunday. Heritage Square Museum, 800 Homer St., Montecito Heights. littlewomenballet.org

Outside Mullingar
An Irish romance written by Pulitzer Prize and Academy Award winner John Patrick Shanley that premiered on Broadway in 2014 finds a middle-age man and woman, longtime neighbors, circling an uneasy relationship in uncertain times. Michael Kirby, Liza Seneca, Armin Shimerman and Kitty Swink star. Directed by Matthew Leavitt.
8 p.m. Fridays-Saturdays, 2 p.m. Saturdays, 4 p.m. Sundays, through Oct. 25. Sierra Madre Playhouse, 87 W. Sierra Madre Blvd. sierramadreplayhouse.org

Gretchen Parlato
The jazz singer-songwriter performs music from her new album, “The Wise Ones,” joined by her band Alan Hampton on bass and guitar, Mark Guiliana on drums and percussion and Gerald Clayton on piano and keyboards.
8 p.m. Carpenter Center, 6200 E. Atherton St., Long Beach. carpenterarts.org

SATURDAY

Isaiah Collier performs Saturday at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts. (Johanna Brinckman)

Isaiah Collier Plays Coltrane
The rising jazz musician and composer pays tribute to the saxophone legend by applying his own sound and reaffirming the music’s ability to evolve. 
7:30 p.m. Segerstrom Center for the Arts, Samueli Theater, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. scfta.org

Democracy Sessions 2026
Music collective Wild Up expands upon its successful election-themed 2024 event examining how art can function as a democratic practice in this time of censorship, polarization and shifting public trust. The new month-long festival was developed in partnership with MOCA, REDCAT and CalArts, with related programming independently conceived and presented by Clockshop, 2220 Arts + Archives, Human Resources, Performance Art Museum and Living Earth, for the run-up to the Nov. 3 midterms.
Saturday through Nov. 3, various locations. wildup.org

A calavera mask designed and a paper marigold.

A calavera mask designed by artist Leo Limon and a paper marigold for Self Help Graphics & Art’s Dia de los Muertos Community Art Workshop Series in October 2026.
(Self Help Graphics & Art)

Día de los Muertos Community Art Workshop Series
Self-Help Graphics & Art launches the holiday season with five free Saturday community art workshops. Participants of all ages will learn crafts to honor ancestors and loved ones. Each week features papel picado (tissue paper with cutout shapes) and a paper marigold craft activity, plus a special project: Stamp collages with SHG Lead Printer Dewey Tafoya (Oct. 3); Calavera (skull) masks featuring a design by artist Leo Limon (Oct. 10); Recuerdo (memory) posters with Victoria Delgadillo (Oct. 17); “Living candle” mini paintings with Ivan Zuno (Oct. 24); and Candle decorating with Nupur Behera (Oct. 31).
Noon-3 p.m. Saturdays through Oct. 31. East Los Angeles County Library, Community Room, 4837 E. 3rd St. selfhelpgraphics.com

Woof
A revised version of “Go Play,” written and directed by Barra Grant, featuring the same loquacious dogs with new insights into their clueless owners.
Previews, 2 and 7 p.m. Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday and Oct. 10; opens 7 p.m. Oct. 10; 2 and 7 p.m. Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays, through Nov. 8. Odyssey Theater, 2055 S. Sepulveda Blvd. odysseytheatre.com

SUNDAY

Come From Away
The award-winning Broadway hit musical, written by the husband-and-wife team of Irene Sankoff and David Hein, tells the true story of a Canadian town that sheltered thousands of airline passengers whose flights had been diverted on Sept. 11, 2001. Directed by Julia Rodriguez-Elliott, with music direction by Rod Bagheri.
Previews, 2 p.m. Sunday, 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Thursday and Oct. 9; opens Oct. 10 through Nov. 8. A Noise Within, 3352 E. Foothill Blvd. Pasadena. anoisewithin.org

WEDNESDAY

The Best Medicine
Caroline Aaron stars in the West Coast premiere of this solo comedy by playwright Robin Gerber and directed by Jane E. Unger.
Previews, 8 p.m. Wednesday-Friday; Opening, 8 p.m. Saturday; 8 p.m. Fridays-Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays, through Nov. 15. Odyssey Theatre, 2055 S. Sepulveda Blvd. odysseytheatre.com

B+ Mom (An Enthusiastic Guide to Imperfect Parenting)
Melissa Greenspan wrote and performs this solo comedy directed by Guy Picot.
7:30 p.m. Wednesdays, through Oct. 28. Rogue Machine at the Matrix Theatre, upstairs on the Henry Murray Stage, 7657 Melrose Ave. roguemachinetheatre.org

Charlemagne Palestine
The Brick and Piano Spheres presents the visual artist and musician performing “Strumming Music,” which he describes as “an evolutionary liquid sound continuum process” and performed hundreds of versions over the last 50+ years.
8 p.m. The Brick, 518 N. Western Ave. the-brick.org

THURSDAY

Ronald K. Brown / Evidence
The landmark African diasporic dance company led by choreographer Brown recently celebrated its 40th anniversary. West Coast fans will have the chance to experience the New York-based company’s unique blend of contemporary, African and African American dance traditions with this program of four pieces that includes tributes to some of Brown’s most enduring collaborators. (Eloise Rollins-Fife)
7:30 p.m. Thursday-Oct. 10. The Wallis, 9390 N. Santa Monica Blvd., Beverly Hills. thewallis.org

Wives
East West Players presents the Southern California premiere of Jaclyn Backhaus’ feminist comedy examining a selection of “great men” in 16th century France, 1920s India and 1960s Idaho. A primarily South Asian and South Asian American cast, under the direction of Hypokrit Live Arts NYC co-founder and artistic director Arpita Mukherjee, brings this redress of women’s erasure in history to astringent comic life. (Charles McNulty)
Through Nov. 1, check website for specific dates. East West Players, Union Center for the Arts, David Henry Hwang Theater, 120 Judge John Aiso St. eastwestplayers.org/wives

Yamel Cucuy
Austin’s Glass Half Full Theatre returns with this production, last seen in L.A. at the Latino Theater Company’s 2024 Encuentro theater festival. The tale of a girl on the verge of adulthood facing the threat of immigration agents and haunted by specters from Mexican folklore is told through live actors, sophisticated puppetry and an original score of Indigenous percussion. Written by Gricelda Silva, Indigo Rael and Caroline Reck, with additional writing by Jesus I. Valles and Connor Hopkins. Directed by Reck.
8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays, through Nov. 1. Los Angeles Theatre Center 514 S Spring St. latinotheaterco.org

The SoCal scene

Wendy Raigosa, 27, Long Beach, uses repurposed materials in her art project at Kate Ingold’s bi-monthly Samizdat Sundays workshop at the Wende Museum. (Carlin Stiehl / For The Times)

Times contributor Miranda Huang wrote about bi-monthly classes at the Wende Museum called “Samizdat Sundays” in which teacher Kate Ingold teaches participants samizdat, “a practice in which Soviet dissidents hand-typed literature, criticism and poetry to bypass state censorship. Each week, Ingold opens the workshop with a new prompt related to speech suppression — an issue with renewed currency today.”

Vincent Price Art Museum is currently staging a unique exhibit featuring the work of Anida Yoeu Ali, a Cambodian-born artist who lives in Tacoma, Wash. It’s called “The Buddhist Bug” and features a 328-foot-long orange insect, which Ali will occupy on opening day, and again on closing day. “Ali’s numerous performance-based exhibits explore her Cambodian American identity and Buddhist and Muslim religions. The bug is her ‘totally humorous take on hybridity’,” writes contributor Siran Babayan.

Ed Ruscha’s new poster for Alejandro Iñárritu’s “Digger,” featuring the Boy Scout Utility Modern font, which Ruscha designed himself and has used exclusively since around 1980. (Ed Ruscha)

Times staff writer Laura Zornosa headed to LACMA over the weekend to attend a private lunch featuring filmmaker Alejandro González Iñárritu, Tom Cruise and Ed Ruscha, for the unveiling of a poster Ruscha made for Iñárritu’s new film, “Digger,” starring Cruise.

Segerstrom Center for the Arts turned 40 last month and Times contributor Jenelle Riley made the drive to interview the organization’s leaders, including President and Chief Executive Casey Reitz, about how the campus grew out of windswept lima bean fields to become the epicenter of art and culture in Orange County.

Contributor Leah Ollman had such a hard time narrowing down her list of must-see shows for our Fall Arts preview, that we asked her to create another list of 14 off the beaten path shows that art lovers should be sure to see.

RM, leader of the K-pop group BTS, speaks at SFMOMA in advance of an art show he curated featuring many pieces from his personal collection. (Mags Ng)

RM, the leader of K-pop supergroup, BTS, is also a serious art lover with a collection of more than 400 pieces. This month he is co-curating a show at SFMOMA featuring more than 100 pieces from his private stash paired with art from the museum meant to compliment its themes.

Architecture critic Sam Lubell went to the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art last weekend and was sorry to see that the museum has erected gates around its main courtyard. Lubell, like many, had been under the impression that the courtyard was meant to function as a grand civic plaza, so he penned a piece of commentary questioning the founders’ motives for cordoning off the area. “It’s hard not to wonder whether these barriers represent something more than security: the extension into public space of the gated, closely guarded world inhabited by co-founders George Lucas, Mellody Hobson and those in their orbit,” Lubell writes.

A rendering of the Las Vegas Museum of Art, designed by architect Francis Kéré. (Kéré Architecture / Las Vegas Museum of Art)

Culture News

Earlier this week the long-gestating Las Vegas Museum of Art hosted a preview of its Grand Central Galleries — a multipurpose media lab and exhibition space located in Symphony Park down the street from the museum’s future main building. Scheduled to open in April 2027, the 15,000-square-foot space will act as an entry point to the museum and is slated to host a variety of exhibitions and programs while the museum’s Francis Kéré-designed building remains under construction through 2029.

The Grand Central Galleries exhibition program was organized by the LVMA in collaboration with LACMA, and will open with “A Shared Light: Monet, Impressionism, and the American Landscape,” organized by Shannon Vittoria, LACMA’s associate curator of American art, along with David Bardeen, LACMA’s assistant curator of European painting and sculpture. It features nearly 60 works by artists including Claude Monet, Paul Cézanne, John Singer Sargent, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and James McNeill Whistler.

— Jessica Gelt

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