Single and trying to cook for one (too hard)

rcclcruiser

I am married, but also cook for one. My husband only eats hamburgers and pizza and he likes to cook it too. He will not eat veggies. My daughter, however, is a vegetarian and will not eat meat. Ugh!

So I usually just cook for my daughter and I, since he does not want to be cooked for. We eat a variety of soups, salads, and veggie pizzas.

Maya129

Beyond freezing, also feel free to get creative with your meals. The great thing about cooking and eating for one is that you don't have to "make a home-cooked meal like mom used to make", you just need to get nourishment that tastes good. I make sort of fun, interesting things for dinner like a whole wheat english muffin toasted with hummus, peppers, and low-fat feta. Or if you make a small-but-hearty dish like a chicken and black bean quesadilla on 8" tortillas, it's filling enough that you don't have to make much (if anything) else. It took me a long time to figure out how to cook for just me... now everything I cook is usually 2 servings (one dinner, one lunch the next day), and if I find a recipe I really want that's more than that, I invite my boyfriend or a friend over for dinner so I can use it.

ATOLLIT

There are several things that you can make into different dishes with the leftovers. I live with 3 others but we rarely cook together as our tastes are so different, as are our ideas of a healthy amount of food :P
Personally, I just cook something for 4 and then eat near enough the same thing for 4 days in a row, but I can see how that gets boring haha.

Someone mentioned chicken already, something else you can easily make varied is beef mince - if you cook some with onions, tomatoes etc, you can have spaghetti bolognese, add some chilli powder when you reheat it and have chilli with rice, then cook some up between layers of pasta for lasagne, and finish it off on top of a jacket potato with some grated cheese.

FatStoatLondon

I just eat the same thing every night *laugh* - if I didn't have such a crapastic apartment freezer, I'd be tempted to freeze more often, but I usually cook on Sundays. See? Check out my fridge:

This looks a lot like my fridge: full of Tupperware!

evilmonkee

DH and I cook for two, but we both travel a lot, so frequently it ends up being cooking for two. Buying a freezer (the fridge came with a tiny tiny one), gladware, and a foodsaver was the best investment ever.
I cook a recipe that serves 4, divide it into individual servings, and freeze. This is also super helpful when I don't feel like cooking, because I always have something healthy to eat in the freezer.
We buy meat in larger quantities, but we divide it into smaller servings (2-4 servings, depending on what type of meat it is), and freeze it. Most soups also freeze pretty well
If you cook a basic dish, you can get a lot of meals out of it. Roasted chicken can be eaten with vegetables/ sides one day, on a sandwich, on salad, or in soup for couple more days, and you can vary the sides to make it interesting. Same with beans - once you cook them you can put them on a salad for protein, make chili, hummus (if using chickpeas), refried beans, etc. . If you eat rice, it's very easy to get couple meals out of one pot, because you can make stir-fries and they're better if you use rice that's been in the fridge for a day or two. If you load them up with vegetables, they make a balanced meal.

The only tricky thing is produce. Lots of fruits freeze well, and make great smoothies. Just make sure you freeze them in sealed containers so they don't get freezer burn. You can freeze peaches, bananas, pineapple, and many other things that are about to be past their prime.
For things that don't freeze well, I buy with a plan so I know exactly what I'll use it on before it goes south.

If you don't have access to a freezer, some dishes are naturally easy to scale. Soups and sauces are tricky, but salads and meat dishes are easy to scale. Instead of meatloaf (or veggie loaf), you can make them in a small muffin tin and get 2 servings (one for dinner, one for lunch). Turkey burgers are also easy to cook one at a time, as are fish fillets. Egg dishes like fritatas and omelettes are really easy to make for one, and they make a good low-calorie dinner dish if you add vegetables.
Tofu is also a great option because it's easy to cook just what you need.

Elen_Sia

I just eat the same thing every night *laugh* - if I didn't have such a crapastic apartment freezer, I'd be tempted to freeze more often, but I usually cook on Sundays. See? Check out my fridge:

This looks a lot like my fridge: full of Tupperware!

And mine! I have Tupperware of different shapes and sizes in the fridge plus baggies in the freezer. I also usually cook on Sundays.