One of the main points of the article that I totally agree with is that recipe authors fudge times by massive amounts to make the total time for a recipe "accep

One of the main points of the article that I totally agree with is that recipe authors fudge times by massive amounts to make the total time for a recipe "acceptable". A favorite recipe from years ago in Cuisine magazine for a way-better-than-ordinary Spankopita called for washing and chopping the spinach. In 1982, fresh spinach was almost always very sandy, and needed multiple washings. The recipe allocated less than 5 minutes for the task that probably took me 20 minutes the first time. (Yay for the advent of pre-washed spinach!). Similarly for doing phyllo (aka filo) dough the first time. Very fussy, very time-consuming. A more truthful phraseology might be "after you get good at this, it can be done in as little as x minutes". We do get faster at repeated tasks ... The cynic in me sees at as part of a pattern where we're constantly lied to in advertising blurbs, headlines and summaries, but that's another rant ... :-)