If you live alone, you may think it's not worth the effort to cook, but you deserve a healthy and affordable meal. While restaurant food is fine occasionally, you have less control over the ingredients. Restaurant food often contains excess sodium, saturated fat, sugar and calories, and it's usually more expensive than cooking. With a little planning, you can fix yourself nutritionally-balanced, affordable and tasty meals for one.
Meat, Poultry and Fish
Buy bags of frozen chicken breasts or individually wrapped fish fillets. Your butcher will cut up large roasts into smaller portions, usually at no additional cost. Ask him to wrap the cuts in freezer paper for freezing. Freezing the breasts allows you to cook only what you need for yourself or prepare more when you have guests. Thaw quickly in your microwave or follow package instructions for cooking from the frozen state.
Vegetables, Fruits, Bread and More
Buy bags of frozen vegetables and fruit that allow you to use what you want and then reseal, or buy only the amount of fresh vegetables and fruit that you know you can use. Alternatively, buy in bulk, dividing the food and splitting the cost with others. Bread, buns and muffins only come in one size. Put what you think you can use in a reasonable time in a plastic bag, then freeze the remainder. When cooking dried beans, make enough so that you can freeze some for use in later meals. You can also divide and freeze pasta sauce, whether it's homemade or canned.
Make and Freeze
Many casseroles, pasta dishes, soups and stews can be successfully frozen in individual portions. You can freeze lasagna, stuffed green peppers or homemade pot pies in individual foil pans for quick future dinners. When fixing French toast, pancakes or waffles, make extra to freeze and reheat for a quick breakfast. Use plastic wrap, freezer paper or plastic freezer bags to help prevent food from deteriorating. Write the date on items you freeze and check your freezer contents weekly to remind yourself of what's available. You can make desserts, then divide and freeze as individual servings, which helps you avoid the temptation to eat too much. Cakes, fruit pies, muffins or dessert breads all freeze well after baking. You can also make batches of cookie dough, roll out and cut, then freeze for baking at a time later.
Be Creative
Cook one food with an eye to using it in other dishes. For example, on Monday you could grill two salmon fillets and fix brown rice to accompany it, saving one fillet for a salmon sandwich for Tuesday's lunch and saving some rice to add to canned or homemade soup for Tuesday's dinner. You can also bake two chicken breasts, eat one with sides of a microwave-baked potato and microwave-steamed vegetables and shred the other chicken breast on a tossed salad for the next day's dinner. The key is to learn to think of leftovers as starting points for an entirely different and healthy meal.
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