Cooking for one

meg72

LameWolf wrote: »

Nelski I'll come over to yours.... can you cope with feeding a vegetarian?

Thankfully the lemon cheesecake (experimental!) went down well. The quiche is one of my standard recipes that I can make with my eyes shut.

Didn't all go well - I bashed my shoulder twice - hard - with the fridge door (don't ask!!) and my hands were so painful after zesting the lemon that I had to have an extra dose of liquid morphine.:(
But Mr LW volunteered to grate the cheese for the quiche, so that saved the ol' paws another battering.
And he's just been and washed up the dirty plates and cutlery. :A

Had I been on my own, it'd probably have been a lump of cheese and a couple of baby tomatoes for dins, and no dessert.

Can sympathise with painful hands. I had given up trying to grate anything because of the pain but found a kenwood food processor with different disks for grating and slicing for £5 on a carboot and its been a godsend.

suki1964

Food processor all the way here as well, only way I cook as much as I do tbh

I'm with PN on the food front when cooking for one, it's fuel, get it down your neck with as little mess and fuss as possible

Seriously I had years of it, mostly ate cheese and crisp sandwiches

Even now that I cook for 3, I'm totally scunnard with deciding what we are having for dinner and it's got to the point now I'm rarely eating my meal. There are more and more elements of a meal I realise I just don't like and I'm giving up forcing myself to eat them just because they are healthy. The other day for example I done chops, pepper sauce, spuds, peas, corn and cabbage and I had four fish fingers and peas instead

I've sat here half the night with a selection of cook books looking inspiration and failing miserably

kah22

One Is Fun by Delia Smith is my default book and a lot of the recipes you can upgrade to a meal for two. Useful if someone is calling or you want to prepare a day in advance. Of course there is our old friend the internet!

Be careful though with standard recipes, it is not just a matter of dividing by 4, 6 or whatever

Kevin

caronc

kah22 wrote: »

One Is Fun by Delia Smith is my default book and a lot of the recipes you can upgrade to a meal for two. Useful if someone is calling or you want to prepare a day in advance. Of course there is our old friend the internet!

Be careful though with standard recipes, it is not just a matter of dividing by 4, 6 or whatever

Kevin

Yes scaling recipes for more or less can be tricky, good excuse for lots of tasting as you go though...

kah22

You may find this article from Delia of use: http://www.deliaonline.com/how-to-cook/and-the-rest/scaling-recipes-up-and-down

Kevin

caronc

kah22 wrote: »

You may find this article from Delia of use: http://www.deliaonline.com/how-to-cook/and-the-rest/scaling-recipes-up-and-down

Kevin

Thanks Kevin - I have added the web address to my favourites

[Deleted User]

ah DD Nelski you sound just like me I love cooking and although I am an 'only' I enjoy treating myself to a nice meal,usually on a Saturday night . when I was first widowed in 2003 I spent a year 'not bothering' which was daft because it just made me more fed up.So I took myself in hand and returned to cooking and again enjoy it.I couldn't live like PN as I don't eat muffins,crumpets or bread of any sort,in fact my beans on toast are beans with no toast,but usually with a jacket spud or some grated cheese.

Tomorrow night I will have a chicken quarter covered with cajun spices and cooked in my Remoska and I will also have some steamed broccoli, carrots and runner beans to go with it.I love veg of any sort and enjoy at least two-three veggies with whatever meat or fish I am having.Thursday maybe sausages and mash ans onion gravy with baked beans or steamed mixed veg. OK its a case of making the effort, but why should I just live on a sarnie and crisps (neither of which I like anyway ) when I have a freezer full of stuff and four packed full cupboards. I want to live as healthily as I can for as long as I can so 3 veg a day plus lots of fresh fruit has got to be better than eating processed junk food I have just had some HM leek and tattie soup for lunch with some cheese and crackersThe soup cost very little to make and I have enough for three more lunches this week in the fridge or if I freeze it on Thursday morning I may make some carrot and coriander for a change

PasturesNew

Whilst reading this, I am tucking into a cheese/onion pasty, mash and baked beans.

The thing with cooking for one is ingredients management. Take my spuds. I bought them early/mid December and used a green bag to keep them - and they're pretty intact still, only just starting to sprout a little. But I fished out 5 spuds and peeled them.

I then opened a can of beans.

So .... I have spuds and beans to be used up in the next 2 days because I bought them/opened them, and/or didn't get round to eating them sooner.

That then dictates, in part, what I eat for the next 2-3 days. I have to eat a lot of spuds ... to finally get rid of them. The beans are good for a couple of days and they can always be slid in somewhere.

Without having a big appetite, you end up "chasing your 4rse" with using things up all the time, unless you're careful. And even when you're careful it still happens sometimes.

I've no eggs. I have not bought eggs because I've spent the last 3 weeks getting through the existing leftovers - I didn't want to add eggs into the equation of "things that you have to eat before they go off".

Cooking for more people you can buy ingredients, use them up entirely, without having leftovers or to freeze anything.

e.g. take a pie/mash/beans. A pie in a family can be eaten, a bag of potatoes mashed, a tin or even two of beans opened. At the end of the meal there is no trace of any of that food.

In a single household you've eaten pie/mash/beans and you've now got three slices of pie to use up in the next 2-3 days or find freezer space for; you've still got most of a bag of potatoes to get through; you've still got half a can of beans that need using up.

While the family are tucking into a nice chicken curry, rice with poppadums the following night, they are also doing so knowing there will be no trace of the ingredients they used to get that meal onto the table.

If the single decides to have that curry the next night they've then got a shed load of curry that needs using up, shedload of rice - and most of the poppadoms.

Now the freezer's full, the fridge is full and you're fed up with looking at the pie and curries in the fridge/freezer and really fancy having a pizza.... but you can't.

Meanwhile, the family are having pizza tonight, knowing that at the end of the meal there'll be no trace of the ingredients they used.....

The single is now wishing to eat pizza, yet shovelling pie/mash/beans down their neck again .... and wondering whether to have pie again tomorrow, or one of the curries .... and they can't choose another meal in the foreseeable future as the freezer's full of pie and rice and curry.



Yes, the single could make just a single portion of chicken curry - by only cooking 1/4 of it.... but then the 3/4-pack of raw chicken is sitting in the fridge, waiting to be used up or frozen. And it's easy enough to cook a single portion of rice (I do it all the time).... but I was using this as an illustration.

The "answer" given is often "Oh freeze it".... you can only really do that for 2-3 days, then you've got food overload in the freezer and it's full and you don't fancy that lot. For most things it's easier to cook more.

Then you eye up the bread bin and it's sandwich time, or toast. I've not actually bought any bread since December as I've already too much food to use up. I miss it ... but I can't buy bread as it'll be yet another thing that needs using up and I've no freezer space.

Food You Like/Eat
Then of course there's this.... if you're somebody who lives on stir fries it's easier as you can lob anything at that. Personally, I've never liked/rated them - and they are horribly mucky, with fat spraying everywhere and clinging all round the kitchen as it's lifted with the fumes, settling everywhere and leaving a greasy residue after time.

If you don't like certain foods, then you can't stick to eating those choices.

We all eat/like different things..... which has to also be taken into account. You have to enjoy your food, you can't eat things just because somebody else likes them.

Quantities:

This is another issue. For a family, it doesn't matter how much food you make, somebody will always gladly scoop up the last of it.

I'm small and have a small appetite. I push myself to use 1/2 a can of beans on toast as 1/3rd of a can is ample, but I do it just so I get through the open can in 2 meals instead of 3.

Those who are larger will be able to, more easily, eat up the food they buy in.

I bought a 2.5Kg bag of spuds. I wanted some mash with my Xmas dinner. I made mash from 4-5 potatoes, but ended up only using 1 tablespoon of mash on the plate.

I bought a swede.... whole s0ddin' swede... one spoonful on the plate.

I bought a bag of carrots, cooked one large carrot, used 1/3rd of one carrot on the plate.

I bought one parsnip, put three rings on the plate, which left two long strips still to be eaten.

It's taken me 2-3 weeks to finish those veggies!

PasturesNew

JackieO wrote: »

I have a freezer full of stuff and four packed full cupboards.

How many? Blimey.

My kitchen has four cupboards in total... in which to keep all my plates, cookware, microwave ware, slow cooker, strainers etc as well as the food ... each has the bottom and one shelf. The SC takes up one whole bottom shelf on its own.

I've got one base unit for food and one narrow wall unit over the worktop.

[Deleted User]

True I'm afraid I have four double fronted cupboards that hold food, my DGS helps me out when he goes back to Uni as I normally make up a 'Ben box' for him to take back with him. My tinned food double cupboard has three shelves that are full of tinned stuff that I stock up on before the bad weather comes in as I dislike shopping and try to go perhaps two to three times a month only.In the other double fronted cupboard it holds baking stuff and herbs,spices ,jams ,pickles plus an assortment of stuff that I often get given to me by my two DDs as they know I like to cook(they get the results), especially my youngest DD who has a large family of permanantly hollow legged teenagers who frequently turn up on my doorstep for feeding on the way home from somewhere.

This month I have only done two small shops so far as I am hoping to use up some of the supplies instead of getting anything else in :):)