How Do I Cook Light For One?

Cooking for yourself can be a challenge, especially if you are focusing on light, healthy meals. Fresh produce can easily go bad before you use it up, which wastes money. It can be tempting to rely on fast food and packaged convenience foods for your meals in an effort to save money and reduce waste. However, it is not necessary to settle for processed, fat-laden foods. With a little preparation, you can cook your own meals without sacrificing nutrition or spending hours in the kitchen.

Benefits

Choosing to cook light instead of relying on packaged and fast food meals offers several advantages. It allows you to control the nutritional value of the food you put into your body. You can choose to skip the sodium you will often find in convenience foods, notes Frances Price, author of "Healthy Cooking for Two (Or Just You)." Light home cooking also allows you to reduce the fat content in your meals, and use preparation techniques that preserve the nutrients in your foods. You can also have food that is more flavorful by cooking light instead of opting for take out, according to Price.

Purchasing

Price recommends buying items that can be frozen, or that have a significant shelf life, in bulk. This allows you to save money, since the price per ounce typically decreases with larger quantities. It also lets you save time by making up several meals at a time for freezing or other long-term storage. Buy the largest bags of whole wheat flour, the biggest carton of eggs and the largest containers of dried spices you can find.

Preparation

Make large batches whenever possible, so you will have meals that are nearly ready to eat whenever you have a busy day, or just don't feel like cooking. Use dried herbs and spices for seasonings--most dried spices and herbs will retain their flavor for at least six months, so they'll be ready to use when you're making a batch of pizzas or single-serve lasagnas, notes Price.

Freezing

Freeze individual servings in separate containers for quick meal preparation later, advises "Cooking Light." Single-serve pizzas work well for this because they take up little freezer space and can be put in the oven without thawing. This is a good way to use fresh produce such as onions and red peppers: they won't sit in your refrigerator and go bad.

Misconceptions

Some nutritionists believe that cooking and freezing foods, especially vegetables, destroys the nutrients in these foods. Although vegetable will leech nutrients into the water if you let them stand after boiling, there are other ways to prepare them for freezing. Blanch the vegetables by boiling them for no more than two or three minutes to preserve most of the nutritional value of vegetables, advises the Iowa State University. Once blanched, these foods will not lose additional nutrients during the freezing process.