Channeling my inner Justin Wilson

As you may have read in my wife's blog a couple weeks back, I do cook and like to cook.

One of my favorite channels on TV to watch is the Food Network because I love seeing new and crazy things done with simple ingredients.

On some level, I am the same way.

Living alone in my apartment a few years ago, I admit I did some pretty unusual things with food.

For example, I would regularly ask for additional sauces and spices when getting take-out food for the precise purpose of using them in odd ways. One of my favorite things to do would be to take marinara from Arby's and mix it with the crushed red pepper and parmesan cheese from Domino's to create my own spicy pasta sauce.

I have always had a tendency to make spicy foods because that is one of my favorite flavors, but with a wife and her two kids, who have less than iron tongues and stomach, I have learned to scale back on the heat so they could build up a tolerance.

I admit, I am not a typical guy in that my cooking is not limited to burgers, chili or something off the grill. On numerous occasions, I sit down with my wife's many cookbooks to find something new to try, like the peanut butter coffee cake she wrote about.

However, like Ivy, I enjoy playing with recipes to come up with a different twist to an old favorite.

Ultimately, I have created some new favorites for my family, friends and co-workers, with the most notable dish being my Surf and Turf Chili, which has a total of six types of meat and seafood.

But in my experimentation, I have received a major complaint about my cooking style.

I have numerous people ask me for the recipe for something I have made, but the fact is, I don't have one.

One of my all-time favorite cooks is that crazy Cajun, Justin Wilson, who always seemed to just throw things in the pot or skillet, but came up with something great.

Unless I am baking something, I rarely measure things out, so the only thing I can tell people are the ingredients I used, and they should add things to their particular taste.

To me, that is the best thing about cooking.

You can add whatever you like, and how much you like because cooking should be enjoyable and lead to the best part, getting a full stomach.