Last year I got a flashback taste of single life when my husband moved to South Carolina for a job and I stayed behind in Seattle. For a year, it was just me and George, our super-sized cat. For about the first month I cooked like I had been cooking for my husband and his slightly peeving teenage metabolism and me. Result: lots of mushy stuff for the yard waste.
Meal planning and home-cooking - this is the stuff of Family Circle, not Glamour or Maxim. It's sort of assumed in our culture that you start homemaking when you are married. Until then, what? You happily exist on martinis and Peter Luger's steak for two - or worse, Yoplait and Lean Cuisine?
The truth is, planning meals is even more important when you are planning around your busy single life. Unless you have a dog, you are the only one who can save your leftover pasta salad from getting the fuzzies.
I know that sometimes even cooking a 30 minute meal for yourself seems like an outrageous amount of effort when you can just pick up a Harry's Burrito on the way home (my go-to fast food when I was living in Manhattan). Maybe some of you agree with me when I say cooking for someone, nourishing them is a true act of love. So why wouldn't you do that for yourself? You deserve it. It can also save you a ton of money to spend on martinis and skinny jeans.
Some tips for planning single:
1 - Halve the recipe. This will generally leave you with 2-3 portions. Plan to have the leftovers for lunch or dinner the next day. While takeout can often look grim the second day, home-cooked food usually mellows and mingles and is better the next day.
Here's a helpful online converter so that you can halve successfully: Recipe Quantity Calculator
2 - Double (and triple duty). Sitting down alone to a whole roast chicken may seem over the top. But if you were to cook a small 5 lb. bird on Sunday you could have chicken soup for lunch on Monday, soft chicken tacos for dinner, chicken salad for lunch on Tuesday, etc., etc. Rather than always cooking tiny portions, think about finding things that you can cook once and turn into several different meals.
3 - Freeze! When I was living alone last year I would sometimes buy family packs of chicken breasts. Then I would bring them home and put them in little, individual sandwich bags and freeze them. If you have the room, this is a great way to take advantage of bulk-pricing and keep your meats from getting sludgy.
Here's a link to help you figure out how long you can freeze stuff: Freezer Chart
4 - Potlucks. Have more weekday potlucks, which are a great, casual way to entertain without entertaining. If you have friends who are neighbors or live close by you could have a standing date - or you and your friends might decide that potlucks end up being a nice, social salve for the recession.
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Along these lines might I recommend a lovely book called "Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant?" it's a collection of essays by food writers about what they eat/cook when it's just them. Fun stuff.
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