Cooking by the seat of my pants

Last night's dinner was a grand success, even if I didn't grill it. I'm keeping this recipe in the back of my mind, though, because it'll be even better done over the coals.

I combined chopped onion, chopped garlic, chopped black olives, and chopped sun-dried tomatoes in oil and herbs, a couple dashes of Cholula sauce, and sauteed them in olive oil. Then I added a can of chopped, processed ham. Got everything good and mixed together.

Then, chicken breast tenderloins, or "chicken fingers." I pounded them flat, put the sauteed mixture on, and rolled them up. There was just enough left over to put on top of each roll and coat them with the oily residue. Baked at 325 for 20 minutes. Served it with couscous and a green salad. Delicious.

I've GOT to try this on the grill! C'mon, weather, warm up!

My biggest difficulty in cooking, though, as the subject line indicates, is that I rarely measure anything, unless I'm following an established recipe. The stuff I concoct on my own are just tossed together. My daughter asked for this recipe so she could take it back to college, but I deal mostly with "dashes," "pinches," "smidgeons" and "skoshes." I tend to just figure something looks right, and I usually balance the flavors quite nicely by instinct. Any ideas on how to translate into actual measurements?

Sounds like a good recipe, I'll give it a try. As for an easy way to get exact measurements, I know what you mean. I'm in the restaurant business and have run into this before. I know what I want things to taste like and I know what to add to get them there the same way every time. I designed a menu for one restaurant with some new items and had to write down exact amounts for them. It was a bit time consuming actually measuring all the "dashes", "smidgeons", and "little bits"!!!

Sounds great...but forget the weather! Get out there and fire it up!