Do you like to read recipes in magazines but lose interest in following them because they take too long to make? Do you ever consider making a dish that looks intriguing only to discover that you do not have half of the ingredients or the time it takes to make it? Have you ever carefully measured all the spices and herbs, only to find the dish too bland or tasting strange?

I am someone who has done all the above, in addition to carefully making out shopping lists with all the ingredients I need, and then deciding it was too much trouble to make the dish. So, I have finally decided that my Dad’s mother was right after all. Her recipes for soups and stews, chicken, stuffed cabbage and carrot casserole were never measured. The ingredients depended on what she had in the house (and due to their poverty when my Dad was young, sometimes it wasn’t much). It did not much matter if the dish did not taste exactly the same time after time. It always tasted good.

Obviously she measured, but with her eye, her fingers and sometimes with her cupped palm. And she tasted to make sure there was enough salt, pepper, not too much garlic, or enough cinnamon or honey. One effect of this was that she cooked wonderful meals every night despite owning only a rolling pin, a hand-driven beater, and a few stout knives. Additionally, everything she cooked had to be lugged home (no car) and was purchased almost every day because her icebox was tiny.

Despite the proliferation of kitchen appliances, computer generated shopping delivery, and the means to get easily to a supermarket, farmer’s market or organic market you wish to go to, your life may be even busier than my grandmother’s. After all, my grandmother did not work outside the house (her work inside the house took all day and into the night), and she certainly did not spend her afternoons shuffling her kids off to soccer or cello practice.

But what she knew was how to cook quickly with the minimum of pots, fuss and measuring. And I think there is a lesson there. How much faster our cooking would be if we resisted the instructions to measure ½ tsp of this spice or 1 tsp of salt or to chop a medium (not large or small) onion or slice two small carrots. Although some of the ingredients have to be kept within a reasonable approximation of what is listed in the recipe—one garlic clove can be expanded to two but not to forty—does it really matter if you add three basil leaves rather than two? Is your family going to complain if you decide to substitute sweet potatoes for white or eliminate the chopped celery from the salad?

Of course, not all cooking can be casual; not all ingredients can be eye-balled the way my grandmother did. Baking requires precise measurements because of the chemical reactions that take place between ingredients during the heating process. But preparing soups, sauces, stews, rice or pasta and vegetables combinations for the first time does not require following recipes exactly. Since neither you nor the people for whom you are cooking know ahead of time what the dish is going to taste like, what difference does it make if it tastes slightly different than what was produced by the recipe writer? You are not running a restaurant, and your goal is to get something on the table that tastes good.

If the dish is acceptable, make it again. It always takes less time once you know how to do it. If you don’t have all the ingredients when you decide to make the dish again, don’t worry about it. I have been making a cold spinach soup all summer that requires the addition of fat-free sour cream after it is chilled. Once when I did not have any, I used plain fat-free yogurt instead. The other day I noticed some old carrots in the refrigerator and decided to cook them with the spinach. I threw in an extra half onion that otherwise would have gone to waste and decided to use vegetable broth, rather than the chicken broth the recipe called for, because it was in the pantry.

Verdict from the eaters: The best yet. The problem is, I am sure I will never be able to reproduce that version. But who cares? 

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