Tuesday, May 17, 2011

eating for one

So as you may have picked up from previous recent(ish) posts, there have been some changes in the group dynamic of the club, mostly geographic. And this sad little picture pretty much sums up what I have been re-learning in the past months: eating for one. There just aren't as many people around to cook for these days, and let's face it, without a partner in cooking crime it can feel less like a party and more like a chore to be in the kitchen pulling together a meal fit to feed a small village.
The way I cook changes when it's just me eating. I find that the 2 pitfalls of cooking for one are
a. I just don't put in as much effort
b. when I do, I have no sense of scale since I am used to there being many willing mouths to help consume. So I am left with a week of the same leftovers.

Therefore I have compiled my top tips for cooking--and eating-- alone.

1. you can build a meal around something that takes very little effort, but which with a bit of effort is way better for you. If you are making a sandwich, make yourself some sweet potato fries to go with them. Honestly, it's just a matter of turning on the oven and slicing up a spud, but feels way fancier when you have 2 things on your plate instead of one. Another such favorite combination is boxed mac and cheese paired with roasted brussels sprouts. I find that cooking where you just put something in the oven and can walk away to do other things is a nice trait in a meal when the social aspect of hanging around the kitchen isn't there.

2. if you're going the route of making an actual meal that will yield 7 days of leftovers, make sure it is something that, like Sean Connery, will just get better with age. I suggest soup. The flavors blend together nicely when it sits for a few days, it doesn't get dried out or rubbery or weird, you can freeze it, and it reheats well in any quantity. Also if you get sick of it by the end of the week you can usually find someone to foist a jar of soup off on. I save my empty peanutbutter jars for just this purpose so you don't even need to worry about getting your bowls or tupperware back. You just need to worry about making sure none of your friends have peanut allergies so you don't accidentally kill them with your deadly friendship soup.

3. On the etiquette of eating alone-- why yes, it is easy to put on a show and plunk down on the futon and eat with a bowl in your lap. But where this activity may be fun for a group feed, alone it can feel dangerously close to crazy cat lady territory, especially if you actually have cats, are wearing slippers, and are watching something on Masterpiece Theater. Given that all of these are apt to be true of myself, I have been trying to sit at a real table when I eat. I find it can be a good time to flip through a magazine, which also ensures that I don't inhale my food in 15 seconds. Because without conversation or anything to distract me from the act of eating, this is also quite likely to happen to me.

4. Baked potato, in any form, is your friend. I love me a baked potato. And if there is one thing that is convenient about cooking for one, it sure is economical. A bag of potatoes goes a long way. It took me a while to realize this after The Great Exodus of 2011, and I kept doing groceries like maybe some Vikings were going to drop by for an impromptu banquet and I should be prepared. Moral of the story: wasted money, wasted food, interesting science projects to discover in your fridge.

5. Cooking for 1 is a great time to try out a new recipe, because if it fails you don't have to admit it to anyone, and no one has to pretend to like your Cabbage, Noodle, And Banana Surprise casserole.

6. Don't forget that you lose nothing by inviting other people to come eat at your place. After getting out of the habit of cooking for many and having built-in eaters, I found that I was forgetting to beam my Bat Signal into the sky when I actually did cook. Maybe I even fell into the trap of thinking that the stomachs I was used to filling were the only ones out there. But food has always been the pathway to friendship; it's the fundamental creed that the Stoned Soup club was built on.

Maybe all this change has served to remind us to go back to our roots.
And our root vegetables.