Cooking without GPS

The other night, as I splashed balsamic vinegar into a bowl for caprese salad, I realized, I can't share this recipe with anyone, because I'm not following a recipe. As a matter of fact, even when I do use a recipe, odds are, I don't follow it strictly, unless it's a baked item where very specific measurements can make or break the finished product. So I have decided to call my method of cooking “cooking without GPS.”

For example, a pot of pasta sounds straight forward, right? Wrong. If I use canned sauce instead of make it from scratch, I'll add a dash of this and a pinch of that to make it taste better. Often, when I'm cooking, I'll add stuff that may not necessarily be in whatever recipe I'm loosely following just because it smells good.

Last winter I made chili from scratch to take for the fellowship meal at church. After lunch someone asked me what my recipe was. It's not very helpful to tell someone, “Well, there's not exactly a recipe. I just threw stuff into the pot until it smelled & tasted good.” 

Just tonight, while eating supper, I had an idea. We had huevos rancheros, and I thought, "Hey, I bet putting chicken breast in the same sauce I used for huevos rancheros would be REALLY tasty!" So sometime soon I'm going to have to try that idea, maybe with a little sour cream.... And now I'm going to go to bed hungry after typing this out!