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Cooking for one
Housemates and I have separate meals. It works out taste-wise, money-wise. But I find grocery shopping and cooking for one difficult.
I like going to the grocery store every day, taking into account the cheapness of large quantities, and the amount of time I have, that proves difficult as well. I go about once a week, and try to buy for the week.
That is part of the frustration. If I want to have salad, I can buy those bags of lettuce, but that's about five salads for me. Which means I have to have salad every day of the week, or else it goes back. Seems the best way to handle that would be making the salad a little different every time, but this requires supplemental ingredients. And the supplemental ingredients often come in large quantities too: I could have a salad with red peppers one night, and a salad with pears and blue cheese the next. But I would not use all the red pepper and all the pear, and I would need to find other things to put them in.
Meat should be easier. You can buy a pack of chicken and put it in the freezer. Then each night you can take out a breast and cook each one differently. But I find I am not creative enough to come up with different things to do with the chicken. Mostly I come up with baking or frying it with different herbs and spices. Sometimes I think about using different sauces. And of course sometimes I think, "I could make a cassarole! Or a chicken pot pie!" or something. But again, so many other perishable ingredients go into those. I could use all the ingredients up and eat pot pie seven days straight. Or I could waste the other ingredients, the red peppers, the pears. Or I could find other uses for them, but again, I lack creativity in this department.
I also have problems with freezing meat. It never tastes as good once it's been frozen. Things stick to each other so you have to defrost them just to get one out. Even if you put them in separate baggies the baggies end up sticking together. They stick to the boxes they're in. Thawing takes so long.
You guys, my life is obviously a perfect graveyard of buried hopes.
I'm just wondering how you single people, or those of you often cooking for one, handle these things. Got freezer storage advice? Foods you buy because they last longer? Base ingredients you buy and then change up every night? Different fast simple ways to cook chicken, make a salad? Combinations you do--like what to do with a red pepper when you've used a fourth of it for salad but don't want to have red pepper in the salad every night? Things you don't mind eating every single day?
And how about recipes in general? Got any you want to share?
I love food. Except beans and potatoes; those are gross.
I like going to the grocery store every day, taking into account the cheapness of large quantities, and the amount of time I have, that proves difficult as well. I go about once a week, and try to buy for the week.
That is part of the frustration. If I want to have salad, I can buy those bags of lettuce, but that's about five salads for me. Which means I have to have salad every day of the week, or else it goes back. Seems the best way to handle that would be making the salad a little different every time, but this requires supplemental ingredients. And the supplemental ingredients often come in large quantities too: I could have a salad with red peppers one night, and a salad with pears and blue cheese the next. But I would not use all the red pepper and all the pear, and I would need to find other things to put them in.
Meat should be easier. You can buy a pack of chicken and put it in the freezer. Then each night you can take out a breast and cook each one differently. But I find I am not creative enough to come up with different things to do with the chicken. Mostly I come up with baking or frying it with different herbs and spices. Sometimes I think about using different sauces. And of course sometimes I think, "I could make a cassarole! Or a chicken pot pie!" or something. But again, so many other perishable ingredients go into those. I could use all the ingredients up and eat pot pie seven days straight. Or I could waste the other ingredients, the red peppers, the pears. Or I could find other uses for them, but again, I lack creativity in this department.
I also have problems with freezing meat. It never tastes as good once it's been frozen. Things stick to each other so you have to defrost them just to get one out. Even if you put them in separate baggies the baggies end up sticking together. They stick to the boxes they're in. Thawing takes so long.
You guys, my life is obviously a perfect graveyard of buried hopes.
I'm just wondering how you single people, or those of you often cooking for one, handle these things. Got freezer storage advice? Foods you buy because they last longer? Base ingredients you buy and then change up every night? Different fast simple ways to cook chicken, make a salad? Combinations you do--like what to do with a red pepper when you've used a fourth of it for salad but don't want to have red pepper in the salad every night? Things you don't mind eating every single day?
And how about recipes in general? Got any you want to share?
I love food. Except beans and potatoes; those are gross.
no subject
Leftovers are the thing I want to avoid. I know a lot of great huge recipes where you just use the whole pepper or onion or what have you, but dude, I don't want to eat the same thing five days in a row, you know? I do it sometimes but it's so boring.
Oh! Good on sticking. I haven't tried all that hard to figure out why everything sticks. I just get pissed off and then don't freeze things. I will try to work on it! Thank you.
And great advice on the salad bar type things. I never look at those because of the expense, but you're right about it being worth it if I can't use all of the packaged stuff anyway. It'll probably come to around the same price. You genius, you!
Omg, so true about parsley. It always pisses me off. Although pesto, mmmm. You know what's sad, is I used to get pissed off about celery...and then I finally discovered you can buy individual stalks. Dude, I'm so lame.
HAHAHHA icon.
Thanks so much! I think it's so cool people help me in my ineptitude.
no subject
And as for using leftovers again, I find it helps to reconstitute them. Even just by adding a different sauce or a bit of a spice blend or even heating it up in a way different than how you initially cooked it can completely transform what you're eating.
One of my favorite things is using some old fried rice or stir fry, coating it in egg, cooking it in little patties, and dipping it in some kind of sauce (often mustard since I'm a self-avowed mustard fiend).
Generally, food that is delicious plus other food that is delicious will produce more food that is delicious, but possibly in a slightly different way. I very rarely use leftovers in any way resembling how they were originally cooked. Except for my pork tacos. Those are just too damn perfect to be anything else.
I actually didn't KNOW about the individual celery stalks thing! YAY! :D But yeah, parsley still pisses me off. Who thought that was a good idea??
P.S. I totally picked that icon out for that response just for you. ;)
no subject
Oh, reconstituting left-overs. Someone else mentioned that. I've done that before, but usually I can't figure out how to change it or what to add. I'll have experiment.
Mmmmm!!!! The fried rice things sound so good!
...I almost always use this icon. Thanks again for all your help and advice!