Cooking for one

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  • jsidel126
    jsidel126 Posts: 694 Member
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    I cook for one most week nights. I make portion sizes to fit my hunger level. Most times if this not enough, I an not hungry enough to prepare another portion. Keeps my calories in check.

    I don't find a need for recipe books. I combine indredients that taste good to me. In combination, they still taste good. I can prepare most simple dishes without detailed instructions.

    I prepare most meals from simple, basic ingredients using a microwave. Most do not take more than 10 minutes from start to ready to eat. A similar meal to a frozen "lean cuisine" takes less time to prepare from basic ingredients than defrosting and heating the frozen one. There are very few things that I cannot use the microwave to prepare.
  • WaterBunnie
    WaterBunnie Posts: 1,370 Member
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    Stir fries are quick and easy and you can add variety by having noodles with it one night, rice another. Make up a pot of chilli and you can have it in wraps, with rice, in a jacket potato etc. Makes it feel less like having the same meal 2 nights running that way.

    Cook a chicken and have it in several different ways. Makes for a quick meal too since you're only heating it through in whatever dish you add it to.
  • beccahummel423
    beccahummel423 Posts: 72 Member
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    I do a lot of the things suggested. The first thing I do when I get home from the store is separate my meat (beef, turkey, chicken) into single serving portions & freeze them in small freezer bags. Then I can just take that out & cook it. I also will make a recipe for something (casserole) and freeze the individual portions. Frozen veggies are a single person's dream - you can cook as much or as little as you want.
  • kls13la
    kls13la Posts: 377 Member
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    Cooking for one is such a pain, especially when you like to cook and want to try fancier recipes. I hate having to reduce every recipe down to one, two or three portions, especially recipes that call for ingredients that I don't typically buy. Then I end up with some random amount of some random ingredient (i.e,. like 3/4 of a can of garbanzo beans or something), that I have to figure out some way to use before it goes bad, in addition to eating the meal that I just cooked over the next couple of days.

    I understand the concept of leftovers and freezing, but I hate both when it comes to dinner. While I don't mind eating the same breakfast and lunch day after day, I like variety in my dinner. I can't stand being forced to eat the same dinner night after night just because I happen to have leftovers and don't want to waste the food. Also, I hate freezing food. Blech. (Also, I don't have a huge freezer.) There is nothing more unappetizing to me than removing a block of some frozen, previously delicious meal from the freezer and going through the process of turning it back into edible food. Two nights in a row of the same thing is about my limit.

    So, I try to rely on dinners where it is easy to make one portion -- a piece of fish or chicken, a salad, a side of veggies, a sandwich. When I do cook from a recipe, I usually reduce it down to two or three servings and immediately separate out the extra servings and put them in the refrigerator. Sometimes I use my crock pot to make something on a Saturday or Sunday and try to use that for a few meals, but I get so sick of eating the same thing that I have a hard time doing that.

    It really is challenging to shop and eat food before it goes bad when you are only buying and cooking for one. I regularly overestimate how much I can eat in a week.
  • Brenda_Pancakes
    Brenda_Pancakes Posts: 288 Member
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    I'm the healthy eater of our family - so I tend to make a lot of single portions... especially for lunches that I take with me to work. I LOVE the meats that you can buy at Costco/Sams Club that are vacumed in the single serving containers... Salmon... chicken breast... I use a LOT of those. Paired up with either fresh veges (I'll usually hit Trader Joe's about once a week), or frozen vege's or rice... I only cook enough for one in my Foreman grill, and it's perfect.

    There are those big meals; ie: anything you need to make in a crockpot, that aren't really adaptable to make only a portion or two... for those I agree with everyone else and say make it and freeze it in individual baggies/containers.
  • irishkrissie
    irishkrissie Posts: 36 Member
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    Wow, that's a great idea about separating the sauce from the meat! Thanks, I'll have to try that out.

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