Creativity

In my humble opinion, there is nothing better in the kitchen than a healthy dose of creativity. It bothers me how many people are literally scared to enter the kitchen without a safe, step-by-step recipe in hand. So, I am saying loud and proud, make something up.

Every dish that I have made from a recipe was alright. Each dish received good reviews and failed with about the same regularity as when I simply began cooking with a group of ingredients and a mind to have fun. I've included in this post a number of pictures of dishes that I have prepared completely from scratch, with absolutely no recipes. If you would like any of the recipes now, please let me know, I'd be glad to try to remember what I put in each. However, the point I'm trying to make with the pictures is that delicious, attractive food can be made without ever taking a cooking class or following the letter of a recipe.

Now, don't get me wrong, recipes and classes have their uses. Those of you who know me well know that I read cookbooks for leisure and watch the Food Network religiously. But creativity is the ingredient that makes a dish personal. It can be using a recipe as a base and changing the final touch to your own liking, or completely inventing a new dish. Take this simple example: my friend gave me a recipe she had found for moist bran-muffins with a cream-cheese frosting. I tried the recipe and thought that it would be a great breakfast recipe, switched around a bit. So I simply added a bit of orange juice to the muffins and mixed the frosting with orange marmalade. The result was a new muffin and my own tastes satisfied.

But to go even further, I have found very little as satisfying as creating a new recipe completely from scratch and watching friends and loved ones enjoy it. Enjoying my own food is one thing, but pleasing those that I care about with it is on another level entirely. So, I encourage everyone reading this to go out there to your kitchens and make something up. If omelettes with peanut butter, mushrooms, and cheddar can be delicious, so can what you invent!

On a final note, I'd like to thank my wonderful girlfriend, Sophie, for patiently tasting my many, many culinary creations, good and bad. I love you darling.

Oh yeah, and if Eric Gagne blows one more damned game for the Red Sox I'm going to blow a gasket. I never liked that guy, and now that his ERA with the Sox is approaching 20, I'm ready to explode. For christ's sake, Tavarez was better than this jackass. Stop putting him in when the score is close!