Spread my culinary wings

Cooking dinner on our camping trip "forced" me to spread my culinary wings.  Moments before departing on the trip, our Plan A to grill burgers the first night became Plan B to make Sloppy Joes. This switch enabled us to pre-cook the meat at home rather than take a gamble on raw meat in the cooler.  In our haste to get out the door, Jimmy (our helpful camping guru who was home on a short college break) tossed into a bag some ingredients for Sloppy Joes using a recipe he downloaded.

We arrived, set up camp, and "chillaxed" as the kids say.  Ahhhh, I had not a care in the world as we were surrounded by gorgeous forest and majestic Mt. Rainier.  

Time for dinner.  I pulled out the bag of Sloppy Joe ingredients.  Not having been involved in the packing of it, I was pleasantly surprised to find the ketchup, yellow mustard, brown sugar, garlic powder, salt, and pepper to add to the precooked meat.  David brought up the recipe from the iphone.  However, there were no measuring cups or spoons. This posed a slight dilemma for me.  I rely heavily on precise measuring and usually feel uncomfortable just winging it.  It felt a little like someone had removed my training wheels before I was ready.

With no measuring cups or spoons, I had no choice but to loosen my grip on the precise measuring of ingredients.  I had to wing it.  A little uncomfortable at first, it actually began to feel quite liberating, almost exciting.  A sense of mastery.  Freedom in the forest.

The Sloppy Joes were absolutely delicious despite my crude "measuring" (actually non-measuring) of ingredients.  I gained some big ah-ha's that day.  I can cook without measuring.  There is flexibility in the amounts of ingredients called for in recipes.  I can actually influence the desired flavor outcome by playing around with the types and amounts of ingredients.  What fun!

I had a similar experience the next night with "2-Ingredient Pizza Dough" recipe that Jimmy had found.  We eye-balled one part plain Greek yogurt to one part self-rising flour.  We simply added more flour to get the desired consistency for kneading and spreading the pizza dough out onto a pan.  Again, it was very tasty.

Using the bike analogy, I'm curious to try going "no-handed' and let go of using a recipe altogether... to nurture intuitive cooking.  For some this comes more naturally.  For others who find a "death-grip" more comfortable, this will take practice and time, a real concerted effort.  I may zero in on this topic for next year's blog -  "how to cook without a recipe".