I can still remember when I was little how my mom would spend hours on end slaving away in the kitchen to prepare a home cooked meal every evening. She would start early in the afternoon, slicing, dicing and doing miscellaneous prep work. And while her food always tasted amazing, I can distinctly remember making a promise to myself that I would never dedicate that amount of time to food prep.

Despite the fact that I’m now in charge of cooking all the meals for my family, I have been able to keep that promise. You may think I take shortcuts and use frozen foods and processed goods, but I’ve actually kept many of my mother’s traditional recipes intact. Thanks to newfangled kitchen gadgets, I’m able to prepare food in a fraction of the time and still achieve comparable results—although I’m hesitant to put my cooking on par with mom’s.