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I was reading an article a few weeks ago about how you cook. (http://www.foodandwine.com/articles/do-recipes-make-you-a-better-cook) Do you cook straight from a recipe and expect a masterpiece or do you learn to cook by handling the ingredients and doing the same dish over and over until you master it. One part I love in the article stated how recipes leave so many things out. The type of stove, the weather, altitude, wether they used metal or wooden spoons, bowls, ect…Many recipes do not include the way ingredients are to be prepared or do not explain terms, or to what thickness you cut the vegetables and such. You are expected to know when something you are cooking is done, not by time, but by taste. No recipe is going to be able to tell you that the fruit used was just ripe or over ripe, that what you are using is not the same kind of vegetable they are using. Many things are left up to the cook, and to an inexperienced cook this can spell disaster. Many people seem to think you get the same results from a recipe every time. Ingredients vary but so does the weather. I love to bake and tried to make cream puffs one rainy day to cheer myself up only to end up with bricks (southern humidity at its best, lol). One of the pharmacists at work makes this great rice that she says took seven years to make. You make something over and over, getting delicious and bland variations till you hit on the one that truly wows the tastebuds. I have a similar recipe I love to make. They are ginger snap cookies with crystalized ginger in them. It took me about three years of making then 2-3 times a year before they went from delicious but ugly to delicious and beautiful.