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I have a confession to make: I’ve never truly understood how your home can have an impact on your personal well-being until about a month ago. I know, I know. I work for a company called Apartment Therapy Media, for goodness’ sake. But it just never clicked for me. If my bedroom was messy? I felt a little down, but I didn’t take much issue with it.

This all changed for me after reading Marie Kondo’s The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. You may have heard it mentioned a good deal this last year, as a lot of people also found it, well, life-changing. Here are some of the key takeaways I found helpful when looking at my kitchen.

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I thought my mother had taught me all of her best tricks in the kitchen, but no — she had one more for me, which she casually let drop while in the middle of our Costco shopping expedition. It’s this: She buys bulk salmon from Costco and cooks it all at once in the slow cooker. And it’s darn good.

Not only is the slow cooker fantastic for this kind of batch cooking, it’s also an extremely good way to ensure tender, succulent salmon every time, no matter how many fillets you’re cooking. Here’s what to do.

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I have a particular fondness for ancient grains, so when I was recently introduced to einkorn, I was intrigued and curious to know more — especially since it’s thought to be the most ancient of wheat varieties available today. Armed with a bag of all-purpose einkorn flour and The Einkorn Cookbook, I did some reading, then took to the kitchen.

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If a genie were to puff himself out of a lamp right now and make me master of any one cooking skill (genies are so specialized nowadays!), I know exactly what I’d ask for. No, I don’t want to make a chocolate soufflé so amazing you’d weep over your fork. (Well, I do want that. Yes, I do.) And no, I don’t want the ability to make the world’s butteriest, flakiest croissants. (Well, again, I do. But, priorities!)

You know what I really want? To be really, really good at meal planning. After years of trying to establish the habit, I’m just now getting the hang of it. Here are five things that, had I known them from the beginning, would have made the whole thing a lot easier.

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