Eating for One
If you ask me, cooking for just one person is way harder than cooking for 25. (Unless you're making spaghetti and you only have a 2-quart pot. Then 25 is nearly impossible.)
When you're one person, you have a lot of leftovers. Depending on what you make, you may be eating the same meal for days. For instance, I really wanted fruit salad with everything in it this week. If I use just one of each kind of fruit, I still end up with an enormous bowl of deliciousness that will start to go bad quickly if I don't devour it. The solution: share with friends at school and foist it off on whoever looks hungry. Works pretty well, but there's still a ton left in my fridge.
The problem is, it's very hard to cut down a recipe that already only calls for one egg. What am I supposed to do with the other half of the egg? Like the fruit salad, you tend to have to use a whole something or you end up with a half-something taking up space in your refrigerator, getting forgotten, and growing into it's own new life form. I can't tell you how many half-full cans and tupperware of unknown content there are in my refrigerator. (I'm only responsible for about half of them.)
Sometimes there's an easy solution. If you make a casserole, you can use little glass bread pans instead of 9x13 pans and split the recipe in half or 3rds and freeze the rest for future use. You can also make the whole thing and devour it for dinner and lunch if it's particularly scrumptious. I make a mexican rice dish that for the life of me I can't make last longer than 2 meals, even though it's massive. Whoops.
Another easy fix is eating frozen microwaveable meals-for-one, but really, who wants to do that? Yuck. But the problem with eating a lot of produce is, again, it goes bad quickly, so you go to the grocery store a lot. Or you make the mistake of getting what you think you need, making big things out of it (like fruit salad) and find yourself having to eat all of that before you can eat the other stuff, but then the other stuff is going to go bad, too. And so you eat more than you wanted to. (But it's healthy and delicious!)
Tonight, my conundrum is chicken. I bought little breast fillets on sale at the grocery store, thinking there were like 4 in the smallest package. Wrong. I've been eating them all week and there are currently (let me count) 9 pieces in my oven. I had to cook them all tonight to keep them from going bad. Now they will get to sit in there in a slightly handier manner, though each piece will no longer be tailored exactly to the dish for which it is meant. If they turn out yummy, though, I will post the 2-minute recipe I made up as I was throwing them in to bake. The aroma is mouth-watering and stomach-gurgling.
To me, eating is very communal. It's one of the main reasons I don't "diet." It's no fun to turn down going out with people just because nothing on the menu is going to meet your current fad's restrictions, or not eating the cookie that someone baked for you, or turning down a home-cooked meal because it's not low-whatever enough for you. Food is about people. Eating alone can be peaceful, but I would almost always rather be sharing a meal with someone else. I'm convinced food is a love language. Let me cook for you!
I miss having people over for food all the time. Between working in a hospitality house, having a roommate in nursing school who welcomed an easy meal, and living next to a dorm where no one could cook, I've had lots of opportunities to feed others. I truly love it. I enjoy almost nothing more than having people over and feeding them a lot of food that I cooked myself.
And yet here I sit, making a lot of chicken that will be used in a wrap, salad, sandwich, tacos, rice dish, pasta, and (how many was that? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6...) three other unknown meals just for me. And I made a small vat of guacamole, handily accompanied by an excuse to indulge in large amounts at one time ("otherwise it'll go bad!") I will eat fruit salad for breakfast and lunch again tomorrow, along with some chips and guacamole, and something with chicken in it for dinner. Eventually I'll get around to the Costo bag of baby bell peppers in the bottom drawer and the spinach on the shelf and the other assortment of things that were leftover from before this last grocery shopping trip.
Sigh. So much to eat, and so little time!
When you're one person, you have a lot of leftovers. Depending on what you make, you may be eating the same meal for days. For instance, I really wanted fruit salad with everything in it this week. If I use just one of each kind of fruit, I still end up with an enormous bowl of deliciousness that will start to go bad quickly if I don't devour it. The solution: share with friends at school and foist it off on whoever looks hungry. Works pretty well, but there's still a ton left in my fridge.
The problem is, it's very hard to cut down a recipe that already only calls for one egg. What am I supposed to do with the other half of the egg? Like the fruit salad, you tend to have to use a whole something or you end up with a half-something taking up space in your refrigerator, getting forgotten, and growing into it's own new life form. I can't tell you how many half-full cans and tupperware of unknown content there are in my refrigerator. (I'm only responsible for about half of them.)
Sometimes there's an easy solution. If you make a casserole, you can use little glass bread pans instead of 9x13 pans and split the recipe in half or 3rds and freeze the rest for future use. You can also make the whole thing and devour it for dinner and lunch if it's particularly scrumptious. I make a mexican rice dish that for the life of me I can't make last longer than 2 meals, even though it's massive. Whoops.
Another easy fix is eating frozen microwaveable meals-for-one, but really, who wants to do that? Yuck. But the problem with eating a lot of produce is, again, it goes bad quickly, so you go to the grocery store a lot. Or you make the mistake of getting what you think you need, making big things out of it (like fruit salad) and find yourself having to eat all of that before you can eat the other stuff, but then the other stuff is going to go bad, too. And so you eat more than you wanted to. (But it's healthy and delicious!)
Tonight, my conundrum is chicken. I bought little breast fillets on sale at the grocery store, thinking there were like 4 in the smallest package. Wrong. I've been eating them all week and there are currently (let me count) 9 pieces in my oven. I had to cook them all tonight to keep them from going bad. Now they will get to sit in there in a slightly handier manner, though each piece will no longer be tailored exactly to the dish for which it is meant. If they turn out yummy, though, I will post the 2-minute recipe I made up as I was throwing them in to bake. The aroma is mouth-watering and stomach-gurgling.
To me, eating is very communal. It's one of the main reasons I don't "diet." It's no fun to turn down going out with people just because nothing on the menu is going to meet your current fad's restrictions, or not eating the cookie that someone baked for you, or turning down a home-cooked meal because it's not low-whatever enough for you. Food is about people. Eating alone can be peaceful, but I would almost always rather be sharing a meal with someone else. I'm convinced food is a love language. Let me cook for you!
I miss having people over for food all the time. Between working in a hospitality house, having a roommate in nursing school who welcomed an easy meal, and living next to a dorm where no one could cook, I've had lots of opportunities to feed others. I truly love it. I enjoy almost nothing more than having people over and feeding them a lot of food that I cooked myself.
And yet here I sit, making a lot of chicken that will be used in a wrap, salad, sandwich, tacos, rice dish, pasta, and (how many was that? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6...) three other unknown meals just for me. And I made a small vat of guacamole, handily accompanied by an excuse to indulge in large amounts at one time ("otherwise it'll go bad!") I will eat fruit salad for breakfast and lunch again tomorrow, along with some chips and guacamole, and something with chicken in it for dinner. Eventually I'll get around to the Costo bag of baby bell peppers in the bottom drawer and the spinach on the shelf and the other assortment of things that were leftover from before this last grocery shopping trip.
Sigh. So much to eat, and so little time!
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