Have you ever improvised a food (due to a missing ingredient) with something that doesn't typically go with it?

Yes Absolutely! That is how all these wonderful recipes were invented, Remember a recipe is only a guide..Playing with food can make for wonderful new and interesting dishes :) The other day I didn’t have any pineapples to bake my ham with but I did have a huge bowl of maserated strawberries it was delicious! Now I want to try your sandwich YUM!! :)

All the time. Especially when the fridge needs to be refilled and I don’t have time to get to the store.

If only I could count the number of times I do/did this. At least once a week if not once a few times a month. Sometimes it’s because I don’t like an ingredient so I’ll use something else, or it an exotic or hard to find specialty food that I can’t get so I use something similar. Or just playing around to see what I can come up with.

I have been eating ketchup between bread slices and calling it a sandwich for the last few weeks, as my new favorite food.

Well, the other day I wanted to make a vanilla cake – since there were no sweets in the house – but only had wholemeal flour so I sifted it until it was as white as I could get it. I don’t know, is that improvising or just being smart?

Cottage cheese and Chinese noodles mixed together, anyone?

Improvisation is the mark of a good cook, but when it doesn’t turn out well it can be embarrassing. My worst was to put veal and Brussels sprouts together. Not good. That made me more cautious, but my experiments since have mostly been successful. I played with cakes that started with a cake mix, two layers, each cut in half, to make 4 layers; Instant Pudding between the middle layers; jam or preserves between the other 2 and canned frosting over the whole thing. The fun is to find complementary flavors of the cake, the jam, the filling and the frosting. Yellow cake, lemon pudding, apricot jam, cream cheese frosting was one of the best combos.

I do it all the time. I am familiar with what we like, and I often add or substitute ingredients.

When I make baked beans I like to sweeten them with brown sugar. We were out of brown sugar once when I was making them so I decided to put a little root beer in with the beans. They turned out great!

I was in Michigan, and tried to make my spagetti sauce. Unfortunately, they never heard of Linguisa in Detroit, so I had to use Chorizo. No, it isn’t hugely different, but that’s all I got.

Broccoli and/or cauliflower on quesadillas.

Feta cheese and orange marmalade on a tortilla.

Shredded cabbage instead of lettuce on sandwiches, Mexican food etc.

Hot sauce or salsa mixed with mayonaise for dips or on sandwiches.

Cottage cheese instead of ricotta for lasagna, or instead of jack cheese for cheese enchiladas.

I love to mix it up!

My husband made a chicken dish he’d usually use half and half in, but we were out of it. We had a bottle of sparkling apple cider, so he threw that in there. He ended up making gravy with it, too. It was delicious!

Didn’t have enough ranch dressing for a veggie dip, mixed what I had left with plain non-fat yogurt.

Not as salty, and not as fattening as the real thing. Definite win.