Chihaya's Kitchen: Things Learned by Trial and Error

• Salt is absolutely necessary for a pot of lentils/beans with garlic and onions and ginger and herbs/spices to taste good.
• When working with sweet onions, chop them larger and let them sizzle in oil until caramelization starts before adding other stuff.  It will be worth the wait.
• Recipes usually say to start garlic first, but if you're going to just dump everything into one pot, start with the thing that takes the longest to fry (usually the onion) and add other stuff in order of time it will take to cook.
• Be patient with bread.
• When freezing liquids, don't make containers airtight until phase change has occurred, especially with glass containers.  Picking shattered glass off frozen soup stock was interesting, but not something I'd care to repeat.
• Never, ever, ever leave your pot of boiling beans on a hot stove and go run errands.  Even if you don't burn the house down, the smell of scorch is permeating and persistent and scrubbing charcoaled beans out of a pot is hard work.  
• If you like your cookies thick and soft, sticking the tray and uncooked dough in the freezer for ~3 minutes right before putting them in the oven helps.