I’m not going to give you my cheap, easy, go-to meal for one.  I’m going to give you about 5 and a TON of other information.  Here we go!!

Do you like leftovers?  If so, try making full recipes and just freezing the rest in individually sized containers for meals later on that week, month, or however long you trust your containers to protect their contents from freezer burn. If you are willing to just commit and cook a full recipe, I recommend this cookbook.  REAL SIMPLE (from the magazine): Meals Made Easy.  You don’t need a lot of mysterious ingredients or gadgetry…and the food is truly yummy!

Now, if you don’t want to go that route, you’ve got two other options. 1-find a great cookbook for one or two people, such as Healthy Cooking for 2 (or just you) OR 2-do what I did when I was living solo, and still do quite often, which is make it up on your own…  BUT KEEP READING! 

Everyone seems to think that in order to make delicious, healthy meals you have to have everything written out in front of you.  I completely disagree.  Many of the best foods are simple and the combinations and proportions of ingredient that make them taste good are not complicated.  What is most important is the means by which you prepare/cook the food.  Have you ever been to Morton’s Steak House? You’ll spend a pretty penny to eat AHHHMAZING steak.  If people only knew that all Morton’s does to this $60 steak is wet age it (which is a fancy way for saying they vacuum pack the meat in a plastic bag and let it sit in its own juices for 30 days in a refrigerator) and then it’s cooked with a little butter, salt, and pepper, and topped with fresh parsley. Sure their are unusual pairings that you might not think of at first, but if you use your nose (which influences our sense of taste much more than people realize), you’ll be able to smell two ingredients/spices/herbs and know if they might taste good together.

If you are brave, I would suggest stocking your pantry/fridge with these things:

·       Barilla Plus pasta (tastes just as good as the regular pasta, only it has tons of fiber and as much protein as a chicken breast)…perfect for nights when you don’t have the energy or time to think of something else.

·       GOOD pasta sauce…Classico and Barilla make some decent (not overly priced) ones.  Please never pay $8 for a bottle of pasta sauce.

·       Sausage…get turkey sausage or all pork (Gualtney is a good brand).  This can be cut up (AND COOKED) and added to vegetables with potatoes, or crumbled and mixed into the pasta sauce.

·       Romano cheese from the little cheese display.  A little block can be shaved onto pasta with some olive oil and salt and pepper.

·       Always keep a big bag of rice (avoid instant rice, go for something like basmati or even brown rice) and potatoes around.  You can “bake” potatoes in the microwave by washing them, piercing them a couple times with a fork and then (depending on the size) microwave them on high.  Typical red potatoes (smaller than the regular potatoes) take anywhere from 3-6 minutes.

·       Get some decent extra virgin olive oil.  You don’t need a $20 bottle of this, but you do need to make sure that it’s actually olive oil (some of the cheaper brands have been known to add colored vegetable oil and sell it as olive oil).  I like Whole Foods for things like this, as their in-house brand 365 has olive oil for very reasonable prices. (like $8 for a good sized bottle).  Cook your vegetables with a bit of this, some salt and pepper and you don’t need much else.

·       Sauvignon Blanc…good enough that you would drink it.  You can “deglaze a pan” with wine and it adds a lot of flavor with just a bit of it.  When you are cooking something and it starts to stick to the bottom, forming brown marks (but before it burns), you’ll want to deglaze the pan.  Pour in a couple tablespoons of wine and it’ll lift up these brown bits, which are laden with flavor.  Stir everything around and then let the alcohol cook off for a few minutes over lower heat.  I find a decent Sauvignon Blanc to go well with so many foods…but a dry red wine works better with red meats.

·       Boxed chicken/beef stock.  Never use the bouillon cubes.  You don’t want to know what it’s in them, or how bad they are for you. 

·       A small package of flour…for the occasional light frying of chicken or searing of stew meat.  You’ll need a light dusting on the meat after it’s been salted, then lay it down on med-high heat and you’ll cry tears of happiness over the way it smells.  Once seared (forming a crust almost on the outsides), turn the heat down and cook the chicken until it’s done (get a $5 meat thermometer to make sure you know when that is).  If you decide to make a stew, sear the meat, then deglaze the pan, and add your stock and whatever vegetables you want, cook for hours until it thickens up and make sure to season it as you go along.

·       Canned beans.  You can make burritos with black beans, homemade hummus with garbonzos or chick peas, chili with pinto beans, etc.  They are nutritious, cheap, and they keep for ages.

·       Whole wheat tortillas for your fridge.  I cannot tell you the amount of times, where I will assemble a vegetarian (though not vegan) tortilla for a quick healthy dinner. Tortilla, canned low-fat refried beans, cheddar cheese, salsa, lettuce, maybe some sour cream or plain yogurt.  DONE!

·       Lemon juice…or fresh lemons to juice by hand.  Adds flavor to cooked vegetables or salads, even chicken.

·       For your fridge and counter top, make sure you always have vegetables and fruits (but buy fewer than you saw your mom stocking, since one person will eat less and you don’t want to deal with rotting produce and fruit flies, not to mention the money down the drain) so that you will actually eat them.  If you don’t buy them, you won’t eat them (enough). I try to buy what is on sale and this is often what prompts me to just make up my own sort of meal.  For instance, if I get asparagus on sale, score a great cut of pork tenderloin, along with some orange bell peppers, and mushrooms, I cannot think right off the bat of a recipe using all four of those things, but I know that I would enjoy a George Foreman grilled pork tenderloin with bell peppers and mushrooms and I can just cook the asparagus on the side with some lemon juice and a little butter that I already keep stocked.

I know this is a lot to take in, but don’t let that intimidate you. You can search practically everything I referenced on YouTube if you want to watch someone do it in real(ish)time.  If you find you need a few more gadgets, such as a crockpot (the SAVIOR of modern day cooking….throw it in before work, plug it in, dinner when you get home), or whisk, etc., check out places like HomeGoods or TJMaxx for WAY cheaper prices on such utensils.

If you go the cookbook route, try and think about 2 meals you want to make that week and make a list of ingredients ahead of time, then you can go to the store once and grab everything you need in one shot.  You can also look ahead in your local grocery stores’ circulars to see if what you need is on sale.

Bon chance and appétit!

You should definitely blog some of your experiments and remember, it takes time and practice, but mostly, it just takes TRYING it! 

XOX,

Lee