Did you know that according the latest statistics, nearly 29% of the US population is a single person household? I did not know that. That means that nearly 1 out of every 3 of us are supporting ourselves on our own, doing our chores alone, eating our meals alone and darn it, doing pretty much as we please!
For most of my adult life I have lived alone, took care of myself, cooked for myself and basically enjoyed whatever felt appropriate at the time. And I really thought I was one of just a few single people out there. But guess again old biddy, there are nearly 38 million of us strewn across the country!
Welcome to the relaunch of my blog based upon my ideas about feeding myself at home. As someone who loves to cook, I still struggle with putting home cooked food on my plate when I'm eating alone. Like most of my single friends, I tend to eat convenience foods or skip to something straight out of a bag (like potato chips!) Or go out to eat, because, let's face it, I love to go out to eat!
Fortunately, I also love to cook (most of the time). And I love to share ideas for others to cook for themselves, so here is my effort to combine doing something fun for myself and perhaps be helpful for others in my situation.
Trying out new recipes has always been enjoyable for me and sharing them with others is fun and satisfying. If you run across this blog and find it helpful or just entertaining please feel free to comment so that I know what you're liking or disliking. Feel free to share ideas of your own too.
We're not going to go down the path of only making single serving meals. It's practical that most of us (including myself) feel that if we're going to go to the efforts of preparing decent food, making enough to stretch to a second serving makes sense.
That gives us the mental shift to allow balancing the practicalities of spending 30 minutes on one meal versus spending 30 minutes on a delicious meal that I could enjoy at least twice.
Let's not get into a huge discussion about the cost of eating out exclusively...or even once a day. But, let's be real here, it's getting crazy. Lunch tabs can easily run $20 and dinner with a drink will be double that on the lean side. And should we even mention that most of the food we're spending our hard earned dollars on is just not that great?
ENOUGH ALREADY!
When I initially launched this blog in 2011 my research on the subject took me almost an hour to see all that was written about “cooking for one” out on the web.
These days there are a few more resources, including a lot of sites for cooking for two, which can be very helpful. These sites are a challenge for me because they are asking me to make a full-fledged meal every time, and realistically I don't eat like that anymore. I'm retired now and basically I eat one meal a day...and I'm using the word "meal" very loosely. The types of meals my mother and grandmother made that included a salad, meat, potatoes and a side veg are very rare at my table and almost always reserved for inviting guests to share with me.
A meal for myself these days can be a nice bowl of soup and a hunk of bread; a salad loaded with vegetables; a hot sandwich with some sort of side, or even a nice plate of the newly fashionable charcuterie. Still, sometimes a piece of a nicely prepared portion of meat with a side of vegetables is a great idea and I do something like that once a week or so.
So let's delve into the project! We'll take some shopping trips, do a little baking, do a little cooking, learn about saving food for later and rescuing takeout leftovers. We might make a pizza or two and shake up a cocktail for dinner. Breakfast for anytime of day? You bet. We'll learn to set a table for us to enjoy our mealtime at home and get into the proper mindset to go out alone to a restaurant.
So dig in and see what you can find on this page that makes you want to get cooking!
