So is it true that most single people live off of take-out, frozen food, left-overs from last night’s take-out, and delivered pizzas? How many of you out there actually cook for yourselves? What do you like to cook?
Personally, I love to cook, whether it’s for someone else or just myself. But judging from my friends (both male and female, though more so on the male side), I am definitely in the minority. There’s just nothing nicer at the end of a day than to sit down to a nice TV show with some good homemade food and a decent beer. I guess you could just sit down to the nice meal, without the TV part, but the only place to sit in my apartment is in front of the TV, since I never bought a “dining set” - so I always watch TV when I eat. Heck, the act of cooking itself is a nice and relaxing thing to do at the end of the day, even without considering the yummy food you get to eat when you’re done (remember, I’m single, and don’t have kids screaming for their dinners!)
I feel pretty much like you do; I enjoy cooking and find it relaxing and therapeutic, and most of the time I do cook for myself. Sometimes it isn’t terribly elaborate (e.g. pasta and veggies or a tuna melt). Sometimes I cook all sorts of wild and wacky things, but this generally happens in larger batches on the weekends, and then I eat them during the week a few times. Lately I’ve been trying a lot of new stuff out of Madhur Jaffrey’s World Vegetarian, not so much because I’m a vegetarian (I’m not), but because the recipes are interesting and tasty, and most of them aren’t terribly complex if you have the ingredients in the house. (Admittedly, I have a lot of non-perishable ingredients in the house which most people might not consider staples; I love ethnic grocery stores, and live within a mile or two of zillions of them!)
This week has involved lots of fish and green veggies, just because I had a craving for them, plus some pesto I made and put in the freezer a while back. Although last night the smell of my local Chinese BBQ place assaulted me as I got off the train, so I ended up with Chinese BBQ duck with bok choy over rice. Cheap, yummy, and not too insanely bad for me! At $3.75, it sure beats the hell out of a McDonald’s Value Meal.
As a grad student, I can’t afford to go out to eat often - even fast food is a rare event. I’ve always enjoyed cooking, and now I get to be more creative, because I have to manage nutritious meals on a tight budget. On top of that, I’ve been using a modified Atkins-type plan to lose some weight, and that can be tough to do. The typical grad student fare of Ramen, spaghetti and rice doesn’t cut it.
So I keep staples on hand. If I find meats on sale, I’ll buy them and freeze them. And I cook for myself almost every night, though during the semester I tend to cook in batches on the weekend and freeze what I can in single servings so I have meals ready and I can grab something out of the freezer, take it to school and put it in the fridge to be heated for lunch/dinner.
I prefer to cook, but it’s difficult to buy just one chicken breast or a single serving of anything. I end up cooking for a couple of days. I wish that “bachelor loaves” of bread came in more varieties.
When I cook, I’m usually eating it for three or more days. I made roast prime rib abd Yorkshire pudding a few months ago. I had a giant slab-o-meat for dinner on a Saturday and gave another giant slab-o-meat to a neighbour. Then on Sunday I had a giant slab-o-meat for lunch and another one for dinner. I had the last slab-o-meat for dinner on the following Monday. (For information, the roast was right at two kilos uncooked.)
I’m proud of my roast turkey. Justifyably so, if I do say it myself. But I don’t make it since dad died because there’s just too much food not to share.
Meatloaf cooked on Sunday morning (made with about half of a kilo of ground buffalo) until Tuesday night.
So although I like to cook, I have to be sure of what I want to eat for the next couple of days afterward. Besides, I’d rather cook for someone.
Then there’s Bachelour Kibble™. I eat a lot of that. Bachelour Kibble™ is what you didn’t finish at lunch. Yesterday it was a whole baked potato and nearly all of a steak. Dinner was Potato Flavoured Bachelour Kibble™ last night. I’ll probably have the Steak Flavoured tonight. Today the Kibble™ is a carnitas tamale, a chicken suiza burrito and a chile rellano. Maybe I’ll have that tomorrow.
I’d say my meals are pretty evenly split between what I cook myself (you should try the Capellini alfredo con funghi or con pollo), take-out, and Bachelour Kibble™.
I don’t like to cook – I’m apt to whip up a batch o’ something (casserole, spaghetti sauce, chili, turkey burgers) over the weekend then nuke it a serving at a time.
Johnny L.A., where do you find buffalo meat? Can you buy steaks? I’m around the LA area as well, so specific locations would be great.
As far as the OP, I tend to eat a lot of grilled meats. I’ll freeze the leftovers and make sandwiches later. I used to live primarily on Uncle Ben’s Rice Bowls, but I’ve grown out of that little phase.
I’m iffy on cooking. I kind of like it, kind of don’t. But then, when faced with a recipe of 6-8 servings - all that extra food is too much, and trying to cook only one serving of something is prohibitively difficult. Not just dividing the recipe, but also getting foods in such small quantities… (things spoil and I never get a chance to use it all. If I get to the grocery store early enough, I can say “I only want one ____” or “Can you give me 1/4 pound of meat.” Otherwise, I’m stuck with a pound and a half of meat. What am I going to do with 1.5 pounds of meat?)
I’ve tried the “make multiple servings and freeze them” idea. Problem is, 90% of the time, I have no desire to reheat the frozen food. (Leftovers and I just don’t get along well.) And though I can eat the same thing 4 days in a row, I won’t if I’ve planned to eat the same thing 4 days in a row.
Then, assuming I’ve cooked, I don’t have a dishwasher, so I’ve got to clean the entire set by hand - a dish or two is one thing… pots and pans (because you have to use the same number whether you’re cooking for 1 person or for 6) just is depressing.
So, the calculations work out to - “1 hour of cooking, 15 minutes of eating, 30 minutes of cleaning” or takeout.
An awful lot of effort to go through for the payoff of homemade food (which I’ll readily admit does taste better, but not that much better).
I tend to cook about three times a week and live off the leftovers (and the occasional frozen dinner) the rest of the time. Since I’m a grad student, going out on a regular basis is out of the question, and anyway, I like cooking as long as it doesn’t have to be done every single day.
This is a perfect thread for me! I just finished cooking a shrimp dish with 6-8 servings. I will portion it out into my Gladware® containers and heat it up at work or at home. I think leftover casseroles taste even better heated up the next day, as the flavors get to blend. I also make sandwiches for lunches and try to buy only enough perishables to last for a week.
I am terrible at eating… I get into an obsession about things and eat the same things everyday for months… currently its sliced cooked ham which I would say I have about 5 days out of seven. With baked pototo or just bread. I can cook but don’t see the point for myself. I just get bored with it.
Of course, I’ll eat it if someone makes it for me … but I’m a kind of picky eater and like some things but not lots of other things. Also what I like today, I may hate tomorrow…
God I’m a nightmare lol…
Oh and I’m also currently addicted to peanut M&M’s …
I’ve been single for the past 13 months and with the exception of entertaining, I have yet to even use the stove, oven or dishwasher since that time.
If I do eat @ home, it’s usually not take-out though, it’s either:
[ol][li]Crispix[]Riviera Blend Packaged Butternut Lettuce Salad[]A Turkey Breast or Master’s Choice Tuna Salad Sandwich, orProgresso Chickarina or Cambell’s Tomato Rice in a microwaveable pyrex bowl[/ol][/li]
…or any combination thereof.
Some of these responses make me really sad! Canned soup: what a lonely existence, especially when it’s so easy to make real soup.
My mom (who is also single) and I have found one solution to the problem of ending up with a huge pile of something which you get sick of eating long before it’s gone: we’ll each cook something, and then swap half with each other. It works well for both of us: she belongs to a Community Sustainable Agriculture thingie, which means she buys a share in an organic farm’s produce before the growing season, and ends up with a huge box of whatever fresh veggies are in season delivered to her every week all summer and fall. It ends up being far cheaper than the grocery store, and far superior quality, but even though she splits a share with a friend who lives down the block, it’s too much for her, so I benefit. Plus I tend to cook more complex and experimental things than she does, so she benefits, too.
I think more single people should take turns inviting each other for nice, home-cooked dinners. It would be a win-win proposition, plus maybe in the end there would be less single people!
I also like to cook; I just get lazy. I find I hardly have the energy to cook from scratch 7 nights a week, so I do subsist off leftovers, or eat big lunches.
Occasionally I do get adventurous. Passover last week meant I was cooking more rather than eating out of the freezer. I don’t get take-out more often than two or three times a month.
Looks like there’s a decent mix of habits here. I have to admit, that though I love to cook I rarely have the energy during the week - I really only cook things < 30 minutes, which means burritos (with ground beef or grilled chicken), grilled cheese and soup, eggs and toast, burgers, pasta, etc. Some nights when I’m really tired, I’ll just pop a frozen pizza in the oven. So by cooking, I don’t mean gourmet cooking by any means. And take out can be good depending on where it’s from - back when I lived in the bay area I’d get thai take-out pretty frequently. I don’t trust the thai restaurants where I live now (I’m spoiled I guess).
If I make something complicated, I do it on sunday, and eat it the rest of the week like a lot of people have mentioned. Although, the best of both worlds, IMO, is homemade pizza. I’m obsessed with it - I’ll make a big batch of dough on the weekend, since it takes awhile. Then I’ll divide it into four or five balls, and stick 'em in the fridge. Then, each night I want pizza, I just take it out, let it warm up, spin it around, throw on the topings (which would be different each time), and stick it in the oven. And it always tastes so damn good, no matter what I put on it. And I’m not a New York pizza purist type, so I put all sorts of stuff on it (that’s another thing I miss - CPK). You get the time consuming part over with on the weekend, but you get the fresh thing each night. The dough actually gets a lot better after a few days in the fridge too. I’m a sucker for fresh bread of any kind though… it has to be one of the greatest things ever.
