Cooking for one

Nelski

meg72 wrote: »

Ekkkk adopted daughter Nelski they are £3 a pot. I can buy 9 cans of beans for that. Mind you does give me a new idea to pop in my food flask for when out and about.

I know its not good price wise but next time we go mummy daughter shopping in London then we can see it as a treat ......(mind you rather have a glass of champers and some crisps for that price lol ) :rotfl:

Like the idea of the ham hock in there may be testing these out for sure

PasturesNew

Doom_and_Gloom wrote: »

The grater is the OHs. ....I just can't get my head around using it.
.... the only one I refuse to use or have used for my food. I don't understand how you can really get a grater clean, really clean by hand as no dishwasher

We all have our oddities, this one is mine.

I can understand oddities, so don't feel I'm "telling you" when I now give my thoughts on graters:

A plain box one's good, with a top handle so you've something to grip - but what to stand it in to catch the gratings - and will it suddenly "skid" off the top and scatter stuff everywhere is always a thought in my mind.

I never thought I'd buy a "handle that turns round" sort as I didn't think I'd grate enough at a time, but I did end up buying one and now I use it to grate cheese by opening the packet and slicing it into 4-5 pieces that fit the width of it. I then grab the first chunk and grate it into a takeaway box, which then goes in the fridge. The rest is put back in the fridge - and next time I know I open the cheese bag and it's already cut into chunks that fit the grater.

For cleaning, You really have to clean them pretty soon - in running water, I use one of those two sided sponge/scrubber types to ensure all the cheese has been removed.

But, yes, graters can be a conundrum.

PasturesNew

Tiddlywinks wrote: »

Toasties....

This makes them easy:

Diablo

This gives loads of ideas:

Book

I actually picked one of those up at a car boot about 2 years ago. Finally got the chance to use it when a BBQ was on the cards last year and I took it .... and it was a big fat fail.

It really needs flames to work, just heat doesn't do much.

I'll hold onto it, but I was disappointed.

Here's a photo of where I shoved it on the bbq right after my burger had cooked

https://s7.postimg.org/6c18063h7/Diablo.jpg

meg72 wrote: »

Also these can get them in poundland.

I have a pack of those - useless.... my toaster's too small to fit them into

I've held onto them in case I ever get a longer/bigger toaster.

PasturesNew

Nelski wrote: »

I know its not good price wise but next time we go mummy daughter shopping in London then we can see it as a treat ......(mind you rather have a glass of champers and some crisps for that price lol )

Like the idea of the ham hock in there may be testing these out for sure

I'd sooner see a Greggs cornish pasty as a treat to be honest

Today I found myself in an unfamiliar small townlet - and as I'd paid for 3 hours' parking (why, 1 hour'd have been more than enough to go everywhere!) ... I looked up/down every road possible and spotted an Iceland.

I like the idea of Iceland, I never shop there for a variety of logistical reasons.

But today I decided to go in - trouble was, as it wasn't a planned "freezer shop" and with a small freezer, I didn't really have a plan of what to get.

But I did spend £4 - and £1 was usefully spent on cheap fishcakes.
http://groceries.iceland.co.uk/iceland-12-breaded-cod-fishcakes-504g/p/57900

Lunch today was two of those. Lunch cost: 17p.

It'd have been nice to have had some small bread rolls to slide them into, but I've not got any form of bread in the house at the moment, so I just had two fishcakes and not even a squirt of ketchup.

My current "phase" is liking rissoles/cakes/crispbakes ... in lots of forms. The idea of a "round shape of something a bit tasty" will feature quite a bit until I discover a new thing to like.

Nelski

PasturesNew wrote: »

I'd sooner see a Greggs cornish pasty as a treat to be honest

well i do love them too

simonineaston

The thing that worked for me was nothing to do with cooking as such but more to do with managing my freezer. Three elements now mean I'm right on top of what's in my freezer (and exactly where!) which simply means that I don't really worry about cooking a single portion, with all the complications that can bring. Instead I just cook whatever I want at the time - it might be a double portion, or as in the case of the boeuf bourguignon I cooked t'other day, using some very attractively priced skirt from Morrisons, I'll end up with 5 portions.
So what's the secret to the Freezer Management?
Here's what works for me...
1) Zip Loc bags (well priced off of eBay)
2) always have cheap foil take-away food containers available (again, Morrisons have them at good prices)
3) Mark everything...
Here's how I combine the above. I make sure I always have Zip Loc bags and foil containers ready, so that whatever I cook and whenever I cook it, I'm confident that I can put whatever I don't eat in the freezer (or the fridge for tomorrow...) The foil containers take a generous, supper-sized portion and the Zip Loc bags are perfect for soup and sauces. The bags stack neatly in the freezer either vertically or horizontally, it's up to you and take up very little room - they're barely half an inch thick. They're easy to remove, being naturally rather slidey and de-frost in running warm water enough to slip out into a saucepan in seconds. Likewise, the supper-sized portion of whatever's in the chosen foil container, is ready to tip out into a pyrex dish, to go into the oven to warm through, by using the same method - a couple of moments under running warm water and out it comes.
The next step - and probably the most important part of the system, is to mark everything with 2 bits of key info - what the dish is and when you made it - I just use any old indelible Magic Marker with something like, Bouf Bourg - March '17 If you don't do this, it's ten to one you'll never get around to eating whatever it is, one 'cos you won't know what it is and two 'cos you won't know how long it's been in there... It's simply no good thinking to yourself that you'll remember - you won't and one lot of vaguely brown frozen splodgy stuff looks a) very much like another and b) rather unappetizing when you don't know what it is!
Lastly - and this is the bit that makes my mates look nervously round at each other when I tell them, 'cos it is on the verge of being seriously dotty - but it works! You keep an up-to-date tally of what you put in the freezer outside of the freezer, somewhere you can read it, without having to get down on your knees , open the door and pore through it all... This is the bit that really makes it work! I use a cool app on my tablet, which is nearly always in the kitchen anyway. Its called Evernote and I highly recommend it for all sorts of note taking - its good even in its free version! :-) https://evernote.com/ but you could just as easily do this using a reporters notepad and a pencil... I have one note for each drawer in my freezer and I simply have a gander on my tablet to see what's in my freezer, whenever I fancy a quick meal and this, my friends, is the technique which means I'm a much better solo cook than I used to be! I'm eating my freezer meals more, and so using up more of the food I've bought and cooked, and by being confident that I've always got the bits and pieces I need to store excess cooking effectively, I'm now more likely to buy and try more meals especially when I see bargain ingredients on offer, where before I would probably have ducked out of buying them, thinking about the potential waste arising from cooking for one and not being able to deal effectively with the left overs. Hope that helps!

PasturesNew

simonineaston wrote: »

...

All very nice if you have the space and are eating it fast enough to free up new space.

5 portions of anything would pretty much have 1/4 of my freezer written off ...

Many "cooking for one" people have never had a large freezer, or a spare, like others who are of the "used to cook for a family/still have lots of visitors, still have the household space to maintain the large freezer I've had for 20 years".

I've got 2.5 narrow baskets.

Two: 14" square and 7" deep.
One: 14" x 7" and 7" deep.

Toss in 3 bags of frozen veg, a bag of frozen chips and half a loaf and you're starting to scratch your head about where to put other stuff. Toss in 2 crumpets, 2 bread rolls and a box of fish fingers and that's your lot

Especially when that stash is being depleted at the rate of 3 fish fingers/week.

Food lurks in a "cooking for one" freezer a LOT longer than in household freezers where more than one is catered for on a regular basis.

I'm never short of freezer bags/containers.... always short of space. Still got the Xmas brussels in there ... and roasties .... and onions ....

Nelski

Thank you simoneaston but you really are preaching to the converted

If you read back on the thread you will see we are all freezer control experts and we dont need any advice on ziploc bags or marker pens...I keep Ziploc in business :rotfl:

Are you cooking for one too? Maybe you could join in and tell us what you cook

[Deleted User]

there are a few people on here who are cooking for more than one on a daily basis. It would be nice to know who is genuinely cooking for one.Preparing food for one person is a completely different ball game but then many threads get pounced on and taken away from the target, in this case the target is the SOLO person ie someone living and cooking for themselves and themselves only. Am I right? or not

moneyistooshorttomention

yep...and it is a different ballgame Kittie...:(

So - today's lunch fwiw was "Gawd damn it - it was one of 'those days' this morning":mad::o

So - lunch was distinctly late - courtesy of a couple of consoling glasses of wine later - ahem. It consisted of a sliced-up banana dolloped with yogurt and a bit of (healthy type) chocolate sauce squeezed on top and some seeds and nuts. Followed by a bit of decent type bread.

I've still not figured out (all these years of being single later:o:() of just how to react after "one of those days (or parts thereof)" when one comes back home and would like a nice hug and a "s*d the b*ggers" type comment about it/followed by jokey comments to lift the mood back up again" - hence resorting to the couple of glasses of wine when that happens.

What do other singles do when that happens? - ie other than resorting to a consolatory glass or two of wine whilst thinking "Blow 'em" about it?