lettered | Cooking for one

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rl: cooking

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.

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Can you hit up a grocery with unbagged salad mix? That gives you just as much as you need for a short period of time. Some of the meat counters I've seen lately have small size packs of meat, clearly meant for individual people (I noticed a huge selection of tiny packages when I was at the Shoreline Top Foods the other day. They looked so lonely and wee!)

If you do buy larger amounts of meat that needs freezing, layer wax paper between each cut before wrapping it all up and sticking it in the freezer. I usually only freeze ground or stuff that's been chopped up for stews.

I used to do a lot of chicken with honey, mustard powder, and various spices, all shoved into my cast iron skillet and then broiled until done. I don't do that so much these days, but it's a good way to deal with the Trader Joe's frozen chicken in a bag. Red pepper can always be cooked up with vegetables such as peas or eaten as a snack.

(Of course, when I was single, I lived on red wine, chocolate, and Chesterfield straights. Oh, and scrambled eggs. I like to cook, and I like to eat, but I tend to forget to do these things for myself.)

Oh! Someone recently turned me on to making huge batches of pancakes, freezing them (again with the wax paper between each pancake) and then heating them in the toaster! A++++ Would Toast Frozen Pancakes Again!

Potatoes are awesome, Joy. :(

Is it possible for you to buy meat and things in smaller quantities? I like to go to the butcher section instead of picking up the pre-packed stuff, that way I can buy a fish, a small quantity of chicken, some pork, etc. If you need to separate stuff in the freezer, wax paper is a godsend.

I do the same with vegetables and fruits: you can buy a really small packet of lettuce here, literally just enough for a one-person salad. (They used to sell them even in the 7-11's, which made me really happy, but they don't anymore. *sob*) I also like to buy lots of things in jars as opposed to cans, since it means you can just fish bits out as needed. I have white asparagus in a jar, which is excellent, and I've also found some really good fish in olive oil which is great in a quick sandwich. Also, frozen peas are amazing and can be used for many things!

Carbs-wise, I love fresh bread but buying it stresses me out, as it doesn't last and I can't eat bread often at all. I've found some breads that last longer, and I tend to freeze the small quantities that I do buy so that they'll last a couple of weeks. Pasta and rice are much less stressful. Oh, and potatoes. :D

However, I do find that shopping like this means advance menu planning is a Good Idea. If you like to plan, awesome! I suck at it, so the things I like to have on hand for flavouring (aside from salt and pepper) are: soy sauce (both Japanese and the thick sweet stuff), various vinegars, canned tomatoes, fish sauce, curry paste, shrimp paste, ginger, garlic, lemon and herbs. If you have space for fresh herbs in pots that's great, since it takes care of all the quantity problems. I have a brown thumb (it's genetic - my mother killed a cactus), so I use the dried stuff, except for rosemary, which lasts forever in the fridge and is brilliant with lots of things.

Favourite quick recipes! Grilled chicken marinated in olive oil, lemon and rosemary. The same marinade is tops with white fish, throw a parmesan crust on that and fry it, and then eat it with sour cream and a pita, or rice. Lazy chicken curry: green curry paste, small can of coconut milk, basil, ginger, eggplant. (Also good with fish, or shrimp.) Thai sweet pork: marinate in sweet soy sauce, minced ginger and garlic; sauté. Toss some cooked rice through a pan with a bit of shrimp paste and chopped onion. Eat with sliced green mangoes. Lazy Sicilian pizza: spread some good tomato sauce and mozzarella on a pita, lash it with beaten egg, top with peas and mushrooms, heat in a toaster oven until all is melty and delicious. Sprinkle with a little salt before eating. (I know this sounds weird, but it is seriously my favourite kind of pizza.)

Yes, too long, I know. *slinks away*

I have this exact same problem. I'll be watching this post!

What about buying a "cooking for two" cookbook and having one serving for dinner, and taking the next for lunch? Is this an option? I've resized most recipes for 2 (since we were 2 for so long) and I could help you out there. I am the recipe queen! I can do anything! Give me a few (or maybe til this evening if the babies wake up) and I'll comment with a bunch of smaller portion recipes.

Oh! One thing I can think of that does single-serving recipes a lot are Weight Watchers cookbooks. Doesn't matter that you're tall and thin (why do I adore you?) just healthy recipes. Give me a few and I'll get it to you. I freeze a lot. Since becoming a stay at home mom, my resources are stretched a bit thin with one income, so I've taken to freezing quite a bit. I'll get you some ideas on that, too! More to come...*food tease*

I pretty much live on frozen vegetables. Granted, there are certainly times when fresh is a necessity, I've found that for most dishes cooking time can be tweaked slightly to accommodate the already-blanched quality of frozen veggies. They're really wonderful if they're defrosted in a bowl of water, drained well, and used in stir-fry.

I also go through a LOT of leftovers. I can make generally about five meals out of one recipe if I have enough leftovers.

As for meat freezing and everything sticking. Make sure the baggies are completely bone dry before sticking them in the freezer, first thing. Then, make sure that there's no air in the baggies around the meat, then either roll the baggie around the meat (if it's something like a chick breast) or just stack extremely flat (if it's something like a pork chop or steak). Sticking comes most often when you've got damp bags that mold around one another. Sometimes, it's going to stick anyhow, but I haven't had a problem with that since I moved out of my mom's house, so it's been about six years.

Definitely scope salad sections in food stores for smaller amounts of ingredients. You'll pay a higher price, certainly, but it might just even out for you if not being able to use up fresh produce is a real problem. In many salad-bar type areas in markets you can get small amounts of peppers, mixed salad greens, individual handfuls of spinach, and so on.

And can I just rant for, like, two seconds? WHY is parsley sold in bunches THAT FREAKING HUGE? I'll use, like, half a cup of it at the most-and that's if I make tabbouleh-and I still have about 900 pounds of freaking parsley. There's only so much parsley pesto a girl can eat, dammit!

I have the same problems as I see not only you but your respondents have. The things that have worked best for me are: 1) resign myself to making things I don't mind eating as leftovers for a couple of days (spaghetti w/bolognese sauce is my standard here. I can vary it by changing the pasta or throwing cinnamon and/or wine into the sauce after a day or two.

2) Freeze the parts of veggies I don't eat to cook with later -- I love vegetable soup. The red pepper after freezing would still be good on a small pizza, added to a taco, etc.

3) Eat mostly ready-to-eat during the week -- ie keep around sausage, cheese, crackers, celery and carrot sticks, olives, whatever and just pick among them for dinner, adding a hot soup on the side in winter. (You can make a pot of whatever appeals for the week.) On the weekends, have a bit of fancier eating, and do the prep to make your weeks easy.

4) good plastic baggies shouldn't stick together. I freeze beef, chicken, and whatever in small bags and put them all together in a larger ones. Glad and Ziplock both work for me -- parchment is a fail. It's worth buying, rather than re-using vegetable bags from the store, for these. Then of course wash the bought bags and re-use.

I've lived on my own for years, and I love to cook. I tend to shop fairly often for fresh vegetables, buying them in smaller amounts so I don't have them hanging about for ages. I have a great produce store up the street, where I buy my vegetables. Meat is something I also buy in small quantities; I wrap pieces to be frozen in single servings, and put them into a heavy duty freezer bag.
Something I like to do is make a stew with whatever I have on hand (I like to use a heavy pot and cook it slowly in the oven). Then I freeze the leftovers in single servings.
I love pasta, and I often make a quick supper by cooking some pasta, and sauteeing some onions, garlic and fresh tomatoes with some fresh herbs as a sauce. I also like to just steam some broccoli, toss it in the pasta with some butter and or olive oil and some grated parmesan cheese. Yummy.
I had an omelette for dinner tonight filled with chopped spinach, grated cheddar cheese and some red pepper jelly. Quick and delicious!

Also: Alton Brown.

Make him your new Power that Be if he isn't already. You will never regret it. Ever. Borrow his books from the library if you can't afford your own copies, look up his shows on YouTube. He is so much more than a cook. In an effort to learn WHY food works, he's hooked himself up with food historian, chemists, biologists, food scientists, nutritionists, you name it--anyone who could answer his constant question of, "why?" Through him, it's easy to figure out why certain cooking methods work, how to mix and match flavors, and interesting ways of reusing leftovers.

I love that man. Oh, good heavens how I love that man. I get stars in my eyes just thinking about him.

Oh, Alton... *.*

I find the more processed the lettuce, the faster it goes bad. I could never finish one of those chopped-up bags before it went bad. Now I buy romaine lettuce (do you call them heads when they're not round?). They usually come as 2-3 head-things. If I don't get them wet, they keep in the fridge for a couple of weeks. Then I break off just the amount I need for a day or two at a time and wash and prepare it. The same holds true for a lot of produce: carrots, peppers, celery, even onions. Cut off just what you need and wash that. Keep the rest as dry as you can and it'll last a lot longer.

For meat, I buy a good-sized chunk (beef, pork, even chicken) and throw it in my slow-cooker overnight on top of an onion or two that I've cut into large pieces. I'll toss in some salt and pepper, but I generally try to keep the spices neutral. The next day I bag and freeze the meat in small portions. Later I can pull one out and use it as the base for lots of different things. Personally, I don't care to eat onions, only cook with them, so I throw the onions out, but you could freeze those too.

I think you are either overestimating how much lettuce is in a head of lettuce or you eat very small salads. I can go through a head in about 4 days, particularly if you use lettuce on sandwiches. You may want to check out http://www.reusablebags.com/store/evertfresh-green-bags-pack-medium-p-27.html?osCsid=5777dca7661cab33e59dd08ccf79a085 You can reuse them 8 times as well and they TOTALLY keep produce fresher longer.

In my supermarket (which, granted, is urban), you can buy meat in smaller quantities - enough for 2 people as opposed to 4. So you can cook for two, eat one piece the first day and either eat the second the next day or turn it into something else (roast chicken into chicken salad or sliced for lunch, etc.). If the packages aren't small enough, a supermarket with a butcher on site will usually repackage the meat if you ask. Takes a minute to get the butcher to come out but I've had them do that and they don't put up a fight at all. Just tell them how much you want and they'll redo it for you.

Which raises another point. Go to an actual butcher for your meat. They'll give you one pork chop, one chicken breast, whatever. The meat will be fresher and you can satisfy your love of shopping every day. Butcher meat tends to taste a lot better and there's a lot of variety to keep it interesting for you.

I find with leftover veggies like peppers, etc. roasting them (which is SO tasty) is a great way to go. It's easy and keeps for several days. I actually will make a bunch of servings and eat them for dinner or even with hummus and pita for lunches - yummy. I make them like this -

Preheat oven to 425. In large lasagna type pan, placed chopped up veggies (peppers, squashes, tomatoes, sweet potatoes (if you eat those), eggplant, carrots, mushrooms - whatever you like) in the pan. Add some chopped up onion or for a REAL treat, chopped up shallots. OMG so good. Toss with olive oil and about 2 teaspoons of jar garlic (minced garlic in a jar - super easy and keeps forever). Bake for about 20 minutes or until tender, stirring at least once while they cook. These are like CRACK and since they are cooked will last for about 4 days. It's a great way to get your veggies in.

Overall I usually plan to eat something twice when I make it or something similar to it (like my chicken idea). Another great meal for one is omelets. Eggs last forever and you get your protein in as well.

*stalking you from ddg_and_sundry*

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.

Soups! They are great for using up leftover ingredients. And look into what things freeze well or dehydrate or can be canned.... Anything that you can 'save' for later. That way you can buy a ton of, say peaches, eat them fresh for a while, and can the rest for later.
On the subject of Alton Brown, he did an episode where he made a dehydrator out of a box fan, some air filters and a few bungee cords. It was pretty simple to make.

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a few things that work.

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