I’ve dedicated the past couple of months to spending more time in the kitchen learning how to do new things.

While I’ve always been enthusiastic about cooking and baking, I think it’s fair to admit to everyone that the earliest part of the journey was littered with absolute disaster.

It’s amazing how fast turmeric stains, or bechamel sauce can snap your wrists faster than a quick shuffle. I’ve discovered other things in the kitchen, too: Flour can stick to anything, wax paper can set alight, deodorant is pretty flammable, and it’s possible to scramble home-made custard instead.

Learning how to clean up after I’m done is almost an entirely separate skill. How many tries did one successful batch of custard take? I stopped counting after fifteen horrible attempts. I’d still find myself trying again at 4AM.

But every time something works, I can say that it’s a great feeling. That’s what makes it worth keeping at.

What does this have to do with contract bridge?

I would say everything.

I haven’t just learned how to make a few basic recipes in the course of a few months. It becomes a lot more than this.

What I’ve learned through the kitchen is patience. Perseverance, too, counting how many times I’ve had to buy ingredients in duplicate expecting to mess it up at least once.

The time I spent waiting for things in the kitchen – boiling water, or a heating pan – I would use to make notes on bridge. While I was busy, I figured that I could just as well incorporate the two disciplines to fit both into busier days.

I wondered, briefly, if other bakers through history might have done the same. Popular brands such as Trumps and Ace can be found in almost every South African food store, and their founders way back when must have been fans of the card deck, too.

Once I played a bridge game again, I performed better. While I was so tired that I didn’t imagine my own moves made sense, I won – and this broke a losing streak that had lasted for more than a few games.

That’s not a coincidence, I think.

That’s a practical example of skills carrying over from the one discipline into the next. Even though learning how to make custard or scones doesn’t seem particularly useful at the card table, I can see these skills brought a big change.

If you aren’t doing as well at bridge this week as you feel you should, consider heading to the kitchen and trying a new recipe. From experience, I can say that it helps!