Hmmm....Ate dinner at my desk this evening, a cheese and tomato "toastie". Delicious (and filling) granted, but a bit strange to eat in comparison to the elaborate dinners that, until recently, I made every evening.
For six years I wrote a (now defunct) blog called “On the Menu” where I recounted the intricate three-course meals that I cooked for my son and shared the recipes that worked particularly well with my subscribers. With my son preparing to go off to college, I rather lost interest in it, mostly because I knew that my days of cooking in that particular fashion were numbered and I decided to call it quits in the spring of 2021.
Though my son only went off to college yesterday, he had been gone off and on for most of the summer, which gave me a preview of what cooking for one was going to shape up to look like. I have not cooked for just one person, except for a week here and there, for nearly twenty years and, not only is it not like the old adage about riding a bike, but I found myself completely unprepared for how challenging I find this. There are only so many salads and items smushed onto toast that one human can manage without gustatory boredom setting in, and I really like toast, much more so than most people.
I reached out to various people who have been cooking for themselves for a while and, while I gathered a few tips and recipes, what I mostly found is that I am not alone in standing in front of the open-doored fridge on a near nightly basis, sighing at what I am going to make from the contents and lacking the motivation to put something exciting together just for myself. THIS WILL NOT DO.
So, it is back to the drawing board for me and a whole new learning curve on how dinner is going to pan out in this freshman household of one. Since sharing online is one way of keeping myself accountable for proper eating (since regularly posted images of dinners of tea and toast, or cheese and crackers and a glass of wine, or silence, would be a bit embarrassing), I have decided to blog about my dinner game again, though from a very different perspective.
I hope that you will subscribe to my weekly recap and will try some of the recipes that I will be posting. I imagine that they will run the gamut from ascetic vegan offerings to pure full-fat meaty comfort dishes, depending on how I feel about being an empty nester and cooking for myself on that particular day. What I do know for sure is that there will be very little hands on time and as few dishes to wash as possible. Unsupervised oven times for items such as stews does not count and, believe me, your microwave is about to become a valued friend.
Please contact me and share your recipes and tips as well if you find yourself in my gustatory predicament. It would be lovely to build a community here of people cooking for themselves and enjoying the process.