Inventive Cooking

I really love to cook, I feel like it is a venue for my creative side. I grew up in a home where my family didn't have much money, but my mom was a wonderful cook and she always knew how to make a meal out of whatever we had in the fridge. I have inherited that same trait which I call "inventive cooking". Last night I created a meal I call Orange Manacotti. It consisted of using a similar recipe to spinach mushroom manicotti, but since I didn't have any spinach or mushroom I used the vegetables I already had which were yams, orange peppers, and cilantro. I pureed the mixture (cooking the yams first) and then added it to the ricotta cheese, along with some other herbs and spices, and stuffed it in the manicotti shells with sauce and cheese on top. Daniel loved it! The thing with inventive cooking is that you never really know how its going to turn out because it is an experiment, but I would say 9 times out of 10 it turns out good and the more I do it the more I develop a sixth sense for what goes well together. Who knows maybe someday I will make my own family recipe book for my kids to have of all their favorite recipes that "mom" invented.