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I've been experimenting lately. I rarely use recipies although I'll read them for inspiration. Example: wanted autumn food badly this week, so I threw together some chicken, tri-color potatoes, carrots, sweet onion, and garlic and roasted them for an hour in cranberry-apple butter and a plain California cabernet. Came out wonderful.
Also: I'm not a fish eater, but I can stand tilapia, so I played with fresh grated gingerroot and key lime juice as a marinade. Voila! Tasty fish!
Conversely...it took me years to learn pastry. I literally tried a dozen times over 5 years before I could turn out a decent pie crust.
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