JohnM wrote:Cooking is what I do best. I spent the better part of today, cooking for a party that I am catering, on Saturday. I will be baking tomorrow. Everything from scratch, but I make nothig from a recipe. So, anytime somebody asks me, it's always a big deal to try to estimate measurements, because I do everything by sight. My wife is always amazed that what I bake actually comes out.
I don't cook much but, like you John, I do bake from scratch, and without recipes, although I generally follow a recipe the first time I make something, and then tweak it to my own tastes afterward. Taste is the operative word -- I don't think I even measure everything by eye, but by smell and taste. If I'm asked, for example, how much cinnamon or somesuch I use, I say "until it smells the way I want it to," or "until it looks the right color." It was common among my mother's friends to instruct "put about a mouthful" of something into a dish being prepared. I don't think anyone actually took a mouthful and spat it into the dish, but it was a way of saying "a comfortable quantity that you would want to taste once it's cooked."