![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
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
I've basically resigned myself to having leftovers all the time, but it's fine by me. I freeze leftovers in individual serving containers and eat them for weekday lunches or easy dinners after long days. I'm a planner, though. I tend to plan 5-6 meals for the week, with the flexibility that if I don't make one or two of them, that's fine, and I can always sub in more leftovers. I'm the same in that I'm not very good in figuring out what flavours go well together, so usually I plan 1 or 2 meals each week that come from a specific recipe so I can try something new, and the rest are standards from my repertoire. That way I also only have to buy one or two new ingredients or spices each week, so my collection grows slowly but isn't overwhelming. And I always start my meal planning by listing what I've already got on hand, and noting anything that needs to be used up soon.
I try to use the same ingredients in different ways eg. peppers, mushrooms, onion and tomato sauce can go on a pizza, can make a sauce for pasta, be part of a casserole with chicken or beef, etc. That being said, you can also freeze raw diced onions and peppers if you're going to cook them later (the texture changes a bit after freezing, so they'll be fine for cooking but not, you know, eating raw in salad or whatever). One of my favourite things with leftover pasta is to add more sauce or vegies if necessary, then put it in a baking dish and top with cheese, stick it in the oven and now you have pasta bake. I'm pretty sure that there is nothing that doesn't taste good when mixed with pasta and topped with cheese. Mexicanish foods are also pretty good for offering different options and combinations -- you can make fajitas with chicken strips, onions and peppers in a tortilla one night, and then chop the leftovers up small and make quesadillas with cheese another night, etc. And rice is a good thing to have on hand, like pasta.
I only like bread for toast so I keep it in the freezer. Some people don't mind using defrosted bread for sandwiches but it never works for me unless it's a toasted sandwich. I admit I've given up on salad for the moment because I was tired of throwing away lettuce. I do slice up lots of carrots into sticks at once and put several baggies in the fridge so that I have no excuse not to eat a vegetable when I'm hungry. Essentially, I am a lazy person, so I prefer to do a lot of prep work and cooking on a weekend or a day when I have spare time, rather than doing too much during the week when I'm tired and stressed. You have to figure out what works for you -- getting into a routine is half the battle.