BMG,
I love recipes, both following and creating. But the one main reason I could never work in a professional kitchen is that, to me, all recipes are suggestions. Whenever I see green bell pepper, for example, that calls for an immediate switch over to sweet red, yellow, or orange (depending on the dish; all three if making sausage and peppers).
I may keep the same ingredients in a recipe time after time, but nothing ever comes out quite the same twice. Close? Yes. But not a standard taste/flavor. That's why I like experimenting, or putting a lot of food in my food (as a certain unnamed moderator residing in a location between Tierra del Fuego and Point Barrow says).