1 Giuseppe: I must to get back to my pizzeria!
2 Giuseppe: I have the mise en place to do. Making the dough, chopping the toppings, grating the cheese.
3 Ishmael: But you open in five minutes! Won’t you be short of time?
4 Giuseppe: Bah! The mise en place is French! I have as little to do with it as possible!

This comic came about when I was discussing mise en place with my friends, and I idly pondered what mise en place would be in Italian. I plugged it into Google Translate and got back a fairly boring literal translation, and then one friend pointed out that since we use the French phrase in English, they probably just use the French phrase in Italian as well. And it is indeed.

While I recognise the value of mise en place while cooking, I don't actually do it much. I've become good at scrambling for ingredients in the middle of mixing and stirring and cooking other stuff. I suppose if I did more baking rather than cooking dinners I'd tend to use it more.