The best thing you can do for your health is give up restaurants, just go to a really good favorite one every week or two. And don’t spend Sunday on meal prep for the week, that sucks. Find a market you like and stop off after work every day and buy whatever simple fresh entree you want, maybe a fresh vegetable (keep salad fixins at home, sometimes I have a vegetable, sometimes a salad), it only takes a few minutes. So many simple recipes, put some herb and spice on a boneless chicken breast and coat it lightly with bread crumbs and bake it while you steam some broccoli or sautee some greenbeans, mushroom and onion in wine,butter, and soy sauce. Pan fry a butterfly porkchop and make a simple salad of romaine lettuce, cheddar and parmesan, onion and celery with whatever dressing you like. I’m having baked chicken wings and a salad dressed with almond oil, citrus, soy, and herbs tonite, and it’s ready so screw this post…
You kid, but they’re working on it.
I’ve lived alone and avoided restaurants for over 15 years but have surprisingly little good advice since my diet is admittedly not very varied. I usually end up making 3 portions of everything except pasta which I probably still eat way too much of.
Best tip would probably be to save freezer space for healthier options that thaw/reheat well.
- Speaking of pasta, don’t get in the habit of buying canned or jarred sauces for pasta (or anything else, really.) It’s worth it to make and freeze tomato sauce in large batches and freeze portions, that way even spaghetti night isn’t too unhealthy.
- Avoid the frozen pizzas and fries.
- Cut and cleaned frozen bell peppers return surprisingly close to fresh when simply rinsed in water, and frozen mixed vegetables for stir frys are fairly edible.
- Chili has been mentioned before and is the world champion leftover.
- Slow cooked stews are portionable and freezable.
Most everything else out of the freezer usually sucks, though.
Invest in some decent 1-litre-ish containers too, makes me feel like less of a loser than eating supper out of a spaghetti-sauce stained margarine tub.
Rice cooker. I use it for everything. Somtimes even for making rice! Film critic Roger Ebert (RIP) showed me how:
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Hey thanks you guys. You gave me lots of things to think about.
Corn flakes.
Try vegetarian/vegan cooking when you’re single !
I have an arrangement with a friend nearby. On Wednesdays, we take turns having the other one over for just dinner and a quick catch-up.
I also have redefined “dinner” as eating something from the Power Plate. So, on a typical day when my sons is with his dad, I will load up my TV dinner tray in under ten minutes with:
-a couple of pickled gherkins
-a tangerine of banana from the fruit bowl
-a little can of sweet corn, or a can of mushrooms, and a spoon
-a glass of tea with milk and a cookie
-a cooked egg
-a raw potato, non-peeled, cut in half and microwaved for 4 minutes, with a little butter and salt. Hot and chewy, yum.
It’s my ultimate dinner a-la-carte menu.
My real quickie dinner is warm toast with butter, cheese, and canned white beans in tomato sauce spread on top. Add a pear and a glass of tea and I’m good.
Well, I don’t know if you were involuntarily made single, but when I was first widowed after 22 years, I could not eat at home. I made fabulous lunches and worked 6 days a week when I could. The other days I went to either a Chinese buffet or salad bar where I could sit comfortably with a book.
But I could not sit at the table and eat, or worse, at a TV tray or whatever in the living room. After 2 months of throwing well intentioned food purchases away, I gave up and decided on my new life.
So maybe it’s not the cooking, so much as the eating alone?
(Blatant aside alert!)
I’m sorry to hear that you and your partner have parted; I hope things are now looking better for you.
My “secret”: cook a lot, and have a lot of leftovers for future dinners.
Here is what a “typical” week of dinners looks like for me:
Monday - leftover pizza
Tuesday - meatball sub with premade macaroni & cheese (I make a whole box of pasta’s worth at a time - that’s enough for 4 dinners)
Wednesday - some sort of sandwich (usually roast beef / pastrami / corned beef or ham & turkey)
Thursday - if I made a casserole of some sort the previous Friday, I finish that off; otherwise, usually either spaghetti or ravioli
Friday - varies, but usually one of (a) a casserole of some sort (including lasagne), (b) tacos, © a burrito, or (d) diced turkey, ham, and Swiss cheese (tip: buy a 4-pound beef roast, put it in a slow cooker, then shred it, bag it, and freeze it - ready-made shredded beef taco/burrito meat on demand)
Saturday - I always get takeout; once a month, I will grab a pizza - usually extra large, so I have leftovers for subsequent Mondays
Sunday - leftovers from Friday, or what I call Chicken Cordon Blanc (chicken breast divided in two, and each half “stuffed” with ham and Swiss cheese - “don’t you mean Cordon Bleu?” The way I make it, it’s only good enough for third place)
The one thing I have learned is, if you are going the “make a big batch and freeze it” is to make big batches of several things and freeze them. I bought a turkey once, and I love turkey, but pulling the fifth batch of turkey soup out of the freezer in three weeks is a little discouraging. So I built up an inventory, and discovered the pros and cons of not labelling stuff clearly. Dinner was a surprise.
Regards,
Shodan
Instead of cooking 1 meal on Sunday and then eating leftovers I cook a large piece of meat with my Sunday meal and then use the leftover meat in different easy recipes.
Crock Pot pork butt can be a boiled dinner with potatoes and carrots. Then I shred it and make migas, BBQ sandwiches, tacos, a frittata…
Boiled ham dinner the next Sunday. Then I make Cuban sandwiches, bean soup, ham wraps, quiche, mac and cheese with ham
Roast beef becomes cheesesteaks, or served with au jus, tacos, beef stew…
Just to join the minority on the don’t make a big pot and freeze it side.
I loved cooking when I was single and it’s much more of a pain now that I’m cooking for a family. When you’re single every single bite can be designed just for you the right amount of spice the perfect doneness to the meat lots of meat or no meat at all.
For me, the secret to happiness to single cooking was shopping every day. On my way home from work I’d stop off at the store and ask myself what sounded good. Tacos, pasta, hot pot, whatever and then I buy the ingredients for a dinner for two. I’d eat half the food for dinner and the rest was lunch the next day. Occasionally, I’d make a giant pot of chili that I’d munch on all weekend long but generally small and varied meals made me happiest. This also stopped me from buying loafs of bread or other things that went bad and I never had to look at leftovers and think “not again”.
One tip if you’re going to go that route I’d suggest asking yourself the question before you go into the store and finding a recipe that looks good on your phone and then just buy for that recipe. Over time you’ll build up spices for the different cuisines and you’ll be able to drop shopping for that part of the recipe. Or learn to skip recipes that have a spice you don’t like. I bought some Chinese Five Spice Powder for a dish a couple of years ago that was terrible. I still have the spice in my closet but mainly because it makes me laugh whenever I find it because that meal was so gross.
Yes, that’s the key to the freezing strategy. It’s definitely to make several meals over time and defrost them over time for variety. I find things will last at least 3 months in the freezer without any problems. More like 6 months or more, depending on how well they’re packed. I still have Hatch chilies from last year that I froze that are still fine (although I just use them as an ingredient, not a meal, of course.)
Eggs last for WEEKS in the refrigerator. Our great-grandmamas didn’t even bother to refrigerate them. See the “Badger’s House” illustrations in The Wind in the Willows, where he keeps mesh bags of eggs hanging from the kitchen ceiling.
If you need to use them quick, a 2- or 3-egg omelette is a very nice dinner.
If you’re intimidated by cooking, try a slow-cooker/crockpot and look for easy recipes on allrecipes.com. There are smaller crockpots like 1.5 quarts, or you can get a larger one so you’ll have more to freeze.
That’s all well and good, but many people don’t have the time, inclination, or talent to shop and cook daily.
Was I suppose to read this in the voice of Sterling Hayden? Because I did.
I’m currently saving up chicken carcasses and veggie scraps in a bag in the freezer to make stock, which also freezes really well.
Canned beans are another one of my favorite convenience foods - with beans, onions, garlic, and canned tomatoes, there are a ton of dishes that you can make in small quantities.
Also, marinating is your friend. It only takes a couple of minutes to dunk your meat in olive oil, lemon juice, garlic, and spices of your choice. We always have a bunch of different spice mixes around and like to play with them - for example, who knew shawarma spices go just as well as pork as with chicken? Sounds weird, but why not? Prefab seasonings like spice mixes, curry paste, etc. are one of my favorite ways to make food that tastes like you’ve been slaving over a hot stove when you haven’t.
No idea. There’s nothing ‘noir’ about stating reality. You do get the premise of the thread, right?
When I spent 6 weeks by myself in Sydney, I mostly stir-fried. Quick, easy and I knew how to do it. Start the rice cooking, then cut up the meat and veggies (always onion, usually broccoli and some meat. Once I bought a small octopus and halved it. The first night I didn’t realize the suckers have teeth (just little cartilage-like teeth), but I ate them anyway. The second night I realized you could just pull them off. Once I tried making mac and cheese, but realized I didn’t know how. The mac packages had no recipe as they would here. I ate out with the seminar once a week, but otherwise I cooked for myself. I had a pizza party too at the end. I made the dough and got some fillings, but asked people to bring their favorite toppings.
When I was four weeks in Japan with limited facilities, I ate a lot of take-out sushi. That was good because all I had to do was point. All in all, I enjoy cooking.
Now that we are empty-nesters we have the same problem. My wife will often make something for two nights. Or four nights and freeze half. I love omelets and that is my bailiwick. I know it is not the healthiest, but I will cut up and fry four strips of bacon and when they are well cooked, add four beaten eggs. Let it set, fold it over and enjoy. I do this only on days that I have baked a fresh bread. I guess if I were alone, I would do similarly.