I used to be an incessant recipe follower. I was terrified if I didn't measure every single grain of salt exactly, my dish would be ruined. Then I began to realize that even if I followed all the directions to a T, it still might not taste good (earth shattering for my rule following tendencies). Recipe writers are not infallible and sometimes their "delicious" is my "meh". Then there are other times when veering from a strict recipe produces unexpectedly great results (not always, but sometimes). As I've branched out in the kitchen a bit and tried more of this thing called cooking, I've loosened up how I throw things together. Instead of a word-for-word translation of a recipe, I'm trying to view my concoctions as an equation of food (like one of those really complicated calculus ones with unsolvable variables and all). I still don't really love cooking but it does seem less stressful these days. Measuring is so 2008 (except in baking, that is like a science experiment).
