Intro and Terminology

The First-World Woes and Angst of Singledom After Family Cooking

It can be very difficult, keeping myself well-fed. I grew up with a wonderfully versatile mother who, being a stay-at-home mom with a talent for it, conscientiously cooked supper for us most nights - and it might be my memory betraying me, but there seem to have been far more made-from-scratch meals than hotdog and Kraft mac'n'cheese nights. Family dinners were important, and so was nutrition, and so was money.

Unfortunately, duplicating my childhood menu today is difficult. The whole chicken Mom would roast has enough meat for 8-10 servings of anything we would have made - and I am not going to eat 8-10 servings of anything in the time it takes chicken to go bad in the refrigerator, even if it is one of the rare situations where chicken won't go unbearably tough on reheating. The mashed potatoes as a side dish? Ha! Mashed potato leftovers are, as is, good only in the sense that they will prevent you from starving without actively making you sick. Then there's the fact that I will very easily become bored with the same meal in the same week, so unless I have plenty of freezer space and a freezable menu, it's best if I limit myself to cooking 1-2 portion meals. Or cook something my roommate really likes, then use that as leverage to get her to cook; that works too.

I will admit that, picky eating and all, I could probably subsist happily on a diet of breakfast and pizza, and I could still eat spaghetti with pre-made Ragu sauce several nights a week. I couldn't, however, stop feeling guilty about it. Frozen dinners looked like a good option for a while, until I realized that most of the single-sized ones have very little in the way of nutrition or balance. This goes double for most of the "diet" meals, which usually cut calories and fat but leave very little in the way of actual nutrition. (I do have a weakness for Healthy Choice frozen meals for lunch, but they tend to have way too few calories for a healthy adult's full meal, and cost way too much to supplement.)

So! Small portions and from scratch; this limits the range of options, especially since I want the familiar taste of Mom's cooking. Well, that and Real Cooking. As a child, I was convinced that Real Cooks did not use recipes or measurements. As an adult, I know better, but I still prefer recipes that I have learned so well that I no longer need measures and can manipulate freely.

And did I add time as a factor?

My job currently tends to take up at least 70 hours of my week, if not more. Having time for hobbies, family, friends, and sleep (roughly in that order) is all kind of important for me. I really love making fresh scones and an omelet on the rare lazy Saturday morning, but it would be ridiculous to plan on the requisite hour and a half for cooking/cleaning that on the average weeknight. (Especially since I usually end up taking three hours - ADHD is antithetical to keeping me in the kitchen for extended bouts.) For similar reasons, my menus usually need to be fairly easy. So, time, ease, variety, relatively low cost, familiarity, nutrition - it's rare indeed to find a meal that fits all of the above.

I don't always try for any of the above. But for the times when I do, and succeed on several points, I feel extremely proud of myself. And tonight I'm planning on experimenting with a new menu issue, and it occurs to me that there may be others out there looking for a fairly simple single diet, so it might be worthwhile to start a blog documenting this stuff. Even if I am too sporadic to be worth following (sorry).

Terminology

The Mouse (c'est moi!) has a mind of quirks and tangents, but fiercely devoted to easy reference. Ergo, a list of terms I intend to use as tags:

Half-hour meal: An entire meal (protein, carb, veggie) ready within about half an hour, if ingredients are ready-to-hand

Leftover-worthy: Meals which are good enough to be worth having leftovers, of course. Most of them leave the cook with little choice.

MRM: Meals Ready to Make. These are meals that I can make with what I usually have on hand in the kitchen. I will try to refrain from using this for meals which require, say, ground thyme, which I keep on hand but would not expect in most kitchens.

Needs Planning: No matter how much I love the simplicity of my sauteed mushrooms, the fact remains that fresh mushrooms will remain so only for a couple days. Which means they will not be in my refrigerator unless I plan on it, and they will go to waste if I do not use them as planned. Still, worth it when the grocery store is on the way home and the mushrooms right in the front and cheap.

Possible MRM/Possible Needs Planning: Sure, my dumpling recipe is MRM with my kitchen, but not everyone keeps ground thyme on hand, so it's only possibly an MRM. Similarly, my mushrooms might require planning, but the recipe works almost as well with canned mushrooms, which are easy to keep on hand. It's Schrödinger's meal: until you look, it's possible you can make it without advance planning!

Shower meal: Remember aforementioned time shortage? It pairs poorly with my love of 40-minute shower time. However, quite a few meals require 15-20 minutes' work in the kitchen and then cook by themselves quite nicely unattended for that time. As long as you remain callously deaf to the weeping of firefighters everywhere at the thought of unattended heating devices. A shower meal might require some time to finish, but leaves you free to accomplish other tasks for the bulk of that time.

Stockpiling: A LOT of my favorite tricks have more to do with a well-stocked kitchen than particularly clever recipes. A meal with a lot of fresh vegetables or dairy products needs to be planned, or the time spent going to the grocery store will likely erase all the time saved by a quick meal. Hopefully at least one of these posts will involve me explaining how I half-reinvented mirepoix by accident. Finding staples that store well and add to a variety of recipes is kind of a must.

Weekend: Weekend meals are those which take more time and effort than my criteria would prefer. Actually, a lot more. And possibly planning. But it is so glorious to feel like a Real Cook and have a Real Meal once in a while that I do not intend to stiff this blog by excluding banquets for one (or two - I share my living space, and it's dull to banquet alone when a friend is there.) Besides, there's always....

Weekend Leftover-worthy, Weekend Stockpiling: No, these aren't individual tags; they're here to remind us that some Weekend projects pay dividends. Chicken pot pie from scratch - including the crust - is a lovely little weekend banquet, but an entire pie is also Leftover-worthy and will provide a good 4-6 portions for Hungry People. (I skip enough meals for time that I usually qualify as Hungry.) And if I'm still blogging at the end of the summer, I will hopefully be able to record the glorious annual tradition that is the Making of the Spaghetti Sauce, in which my roommate and I buy as much as we can carry from the farmer's market and spend the better part of a weekend making and canning tomato sauce for the year ahead.

There we go! And now, to see where the blog shall go!