Cooking is definitely a group activity. Not so much a group of people in the kitchen. More, a group of people at the table. It’s easier to cook for a group than to cook for yourself. Cooking is a selfless act, you’re doing something for others. Cooking is an act of love. Yes, no matter what it is, even a microwave meal, you’re doing something for someone and not expecting anything in return except, maybe a “Thank You”, or “This tastes good”. But cooking for one, well, its different, it’s just you, no one to say Thank You, no smiling faces across the table, and that makes it difficult.
Simple
This is where the shortcuts come in. Take out, fast food etc. even skip the meal and have a bowl of cereal. All the stuff that’s bad for us. Well, I have some ideas I’d like to share. Everyone’s situation is different. We all work different hours, some have a couple of jobs, some have one but work many hours. And who wants to come home after a long day and cook? So the idea is to come up with simple. Simple to prepare, simple to cook, and simple to clean up.
My mother lived alone for a number of years, she is a proponent of one pot meals. One pot to cook and one pot to clean. I think she’s onto something. Now, one pot meals cover a few different things. It could be in the oven, on the stovetop or the slow cooker, or a combination of all of them.
Time
This is an important consideration. Time is important to all of us, and we never seem to have enough of it. So the last thing you want to do is spend time cooking dinner. And the process isn’t just cooking, but, also cleaning up, all this is time, time that we have to justify to ourselves. Something I’ve found to help is unsupervised cooking time. So what is that. Well that is time when dinner is cooking and you don’t have to do anything to it. That could be simmering on the stove top, baking in the oven. The more unsupervised cooking time, the better. kind of set it and forget it.
Minimize prep time when possible. I have a pan set that can be used on the stove top and in the oven, I can start the cooking on the stovetop, and finish in the oven. Some of you will and some of you won’t, if you don’t an oven dish will do, be aware that using an oven dish adds to cleanup, something to take into consideration.
Portion Size
Portion size is also a factor. How much do you eat at a meal? Some of us, like me, have a healthy appetite. However, some, are quite happy to eat smaller portions. There are many who have dietary concerns. This may be counting points at weightwatchers, or a doctor ordered diet. Leftovers are definitely part of the plan. Some leftovers from a meal can be saved as a snack. Sometimes it’s easier cook enough on one night for two nights dinner, the microwave comes in handy.
Put a few nights dinner together on a weekend day and either freeze or refrigerate meal portions for the week. It doesn’t have to be a complete meal. Salads are good and healthy, grab some fresh stuff from the fridge is easy, the protein ingredient is precooked and refrigerated (chicken breast, piece of salmon), a few seconds in the microwave and a healthy dinner is complete
Planning
Planning is also an important part of cooking for one. It all starts at the store. What you buy. Meal planning is important. Most food packaging you buy at the grocery store is set up for a family. Well, that doesn’t help you much. Part of the solution is to repackage everything when you get home from the shopping trip. The freezer becomes your friend, and you can practically freeze anything. A good example of that, is bread. I buy a loaf and freeze it, take out slices as I need them and defrost them in the toaster oven. Google is also your friend, never guess, always research.
But the planning part is also taking stuff out of the freezer so it can thaw before cooking. And, if you’re storing food either in the freezer or closet, you need containers (that being said, I use zip lock baggies a lot), and you may need to add a pot or two (I had mentioned earlier about a pan that can go from stove top to oven), so there is going to be an investment on your part.
I have found, eating healthy home cooked meals is not the easy option. Most major food companies have spent a lot of time to make meal prep something quick and easy. And there is a demand for that. The problem is that, to make something quick and easy from the package, tends to make it unhealthy. Usually high in salt and processed foods. So, we’re going to have to invest time, energy and finances to make this work. But the payoff is, the food will be healthy, and delicious and you can take pride in what you’re eating. In this section I’m going to go over some ideas to create simple healthy meals for one. I’m going to utilize some of the ideas I have just mentioned, simple one pot dishes and batch cooking, to make an easy dinner.
So there you have it, please check this link for recipes and ideas. As always, thank you for reading, enjoy dinner