When my brother-in-law suddenly found himself single and in charge of his 9-year-old son a few years ago, he came to me with an extreme case of kitchen panic. “What am I going to cook for him for dinner?!” he fretted. “How will I have the time when I get home from work?”

I talked him down from the ceiling with reassuring words about planning ahead and batch-cooking on the weekends. But the morsel of advice that he -- and actually several of my kitchen-phobic friends -- valued most is this: The minute you march into your kitchen to cook dinner, put up a big pot of water to boil. (A recent article in The New York Times talked about this time-saving strategy, which is what made me think about it again.)

While the pot is busy doing its thing, you can proceed to disembowel your fridge, rifle through your freezer and pull apart your pantry. And when you finally emerge with your big idea, there your magic water will be (imagine a heavenly beam of light shining down on it), ready to boil up potatoes and hot dogs at the very same time, or make rice in a jiff, or reconstitute that leftover linguine you unearthed from the back of the fridge. It sure beats waiting around for the pot to boil after the fact.

And if you don’t end up boiling anything at all? Use it to make yourself a cup of tea, pour it over your dishes, or heck, dump it into your bathtub (once it’s cooled down a little) and give yourself a mini-spa moment. You’ll feel clever enough to deserve it.