Recipes? I Don't Think So!

You ever have something really tasty and you ask the person who made it, "Can I have the recipe?"  Of course you have and they oblige, give you the little 3 X 5 index card, you go home, make the dish a few days later and think.....hmmm, this isn't like the one the other night.  So you call the person and they say "Oh I forgot to tell you that I changed it and added a little bit of "whatever" to it".  Frustrating to most, but not to me.  You see, recipes in my world are "Guides", a road map to get from a bunch of ingredients in your kitchen to an edible plate on the table.  I believe cooking should be just that, a journey where you are able to explore, get lost, make wrong turns, but hopefully at the end, wind up in a most memorable place.
So let go of "The Recipe Said This" notion and lose yourself a little when you’re cooking.  Come up with new ideas, CHANGE THE RECIPE!  That is what I encourage.  You make take something from this blog, make it and not necessarily like it.  That's O.K. with me, we are not the same and we have different tastes, but if you like the idea of the dish but not all the ingredients, change them and make it your own, that's what cooking is.  I call my recipes "guides", because that is what they are, a guide to a dish, able to be altered, adjusted and morphed into something that suit your liking.
This does not only go for what I post here, but wherever you pick up a recipe, let it be your "guide".  The only place I don't recommend changing things is when it comes to baking.  Baking, to me, is more of s science, everything has to be just right or you do not get the desired outcome, especially in cakes, pies, cookies and so on.  But cooking, well the world is your oyster.
Changing a guide by even the slightest can give you a dish you absolutely love!  Just like the person earlier who said "Oh I forgot to tell you that I changed it and added a little bit of "whatever" to it", that's the ticket, he or she got it.  There is no reason why you cannot do the same.
Many people say, "I can’t cook" and maybe that's true, but I believe if anyone is given a guide to a dish they truly like, they make it and really think about what they like or dislike about it and change it, they too have just begun to cook.
Cooking should be fun, exciting and exploratory, so get out there and give it shot!