my name is X and i've been recipe-free for two months

i've done it!

i haven't used recipes for main dishes for quite some time, relying rather on an internal sense of some kind to tell me what to add when. if i want to make a particular dish i haven't previously made, fettuccini alfredo, for example, i'll look at about 10 recipes on cooks.com to see generally what they have in them, then take it on my own from there.

my "creative cooking" sense works best when i'm just cooking for myself, or for the two of us. it gets a little blocked when i try cooking for a crowd, or when i am under stress. i discovered it first upon arriving in guatemala, seeing that my father weighed 135 lbs. and my mom weighed 105, and deciding that my malnourished family needed a good meal. i further developed it when living alone in the hills of Yankton at auntie trish's lavender farm, one fall. i couldn't afford food, really, but auntie trish has a fully stocked spice rack that i got quite comfortable with; yes, without compromising myself. ok, maybe a little: i watched Friends every night while i cooked (i didn't have any of my own, ok?). so even cheap veggies and pasta tasted good.

but i've never been able to break free from baked-goods recipes. the chemistry of it all was WAY too scary for that. but recently i've made cookies (twice), pancakes, apple pie, another pastry, and noodles... ALL from scratch, NO recipes! and, better yet, NO disasters!

ok, i'm done bragging.