Use recipes when you need them; for copying a dish someone else has made, for a style of cooking that you are unfamiliar with, or for something like cakes that needs more exact proportions between the ingredients. If you are just learning how to cook then you will certainly need recipes to guide you, but as you gain experience and the basic knowledge of how things are cooked you will find that you’ll need them less often.

Learning to cook many of your basic dishes without using a recipe, as our grandparents did, makes cooking less like a chore and more like a hobby. I’m sure that all of you already have quite a few recipe-free dishes; scrambled eggs, salads, sandwiches and such. The name of the game is improvisation and creativity, keeping your refrigerator and cabinets well stocked and organized will give you a multitude of culinary opportunities. Another advantage of improvising is that the perishable ingredients in the refrigerator tend to be used while still in their prime so that they will not only taste better but are consumed at their highest nutritional peak as well. This allows you to be able to prepare just what you need for one meal without filling the refrigerator with leftovers and knowing that it was made using the freshest and healthiest ingredients.