making up recipes

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Posted by amybyrd21 • 10/05/09
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How many of us just make up recipes off the top of our heads? My daughter can just look at a few ingredients and come up with something. I take old recipes and update them (that is my big thing) and substitute ingredients when I am out of something. Today she took cresent rolls (the canned kind) and made mini pizza slices out of them with out sauce. They had hambuger, bacon, mushrooms, green onion and cheese on them. She baked them until the crust was really crispy. she came up with it with what she had on hand. I was impressed.

making up recipes

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Theresa111 (10/05/09)

Hunger is the true instigator of recipe invention. Once someone knows their way about the kitchen the combinations are endless. I have to admit that I try recipes and after I visualize it or taste it I will, most of the time, add in a few choice selections. Many times it has to do with what ingredients I have on hand or am lacking or what needs to be cooked before it is not fresh enough to use. I have been guilty, less lately, of having to throw out what was perfectly good food, all because I was trying to have too many perishable ingredients on hand and experimenting with too many different recipes within a short period of time. Now that it is just we two, my husband and I can only eat so much. The freezer comes in handy so I have prepared food on hand.

It is fantastic your daughter wants to cook and try new foods. Keep encouraging her.

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  amybyrd21 (10/05/09)
  
  I guess I am lucky the food we dont eat gets tossed to the dog outside or to the pigs and chickens so it doesnt go to waste. My dog has to have his scapes mixed with his food and warned up or he wont eat it at all. My pigs and chickens do not care how it comes from the kitchen. And we compost some of it.
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Anniepooh (10/05/09)

Well, my other job is recipe developing, so I do it all the time. But, it can wear me out for daily meals, so I go lazy and fall back on tried-and-true stuff for dinner a lot of the time.

Encourage her to learn more and go to school! That kind of talent isn't everywhere - she should do something with it.

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  Theresa111 (10/05/09)
  
  She can apply for scholarships for culinary schools, too.
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sugarpies (10/06/09)

Honestly, I don't know if I make up recipes or not. Many times I start off with some traditional base like a cake and then improvise from there. Other times when I cook a full meal I'll pick a few ingredients sort of throw something together on the spur of the moment.

Sometimes I think cooking is like composing music. All the great composers borrowed at times from one another. That's why you can hear echoes of Mozart in Beethoven and echoes of Handel in Mozart and echoes of Beethoven in Brahms. As cooks I think we often do that too. We find things we like and we adapt those notes into our own works to create something that is at once slightly familiar but also entirely new.

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  Theresa111 (10/06/09)
  
  You got it right. We put our own spin on a recipe, if we once tried it the exact way it is written. After that it's all holds barred.
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Theresa111 (10/07/09)

I change up the way I prepare breakfast eggs. It makes it more interesting.

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