The Goods Are Odd

I have spent only a limited time of my life living alone. I moved from the family house to communal housing then to life as part of a couple. Occasional travel or other changes have required me to be by myself for extended periods. The last three weeks was one such occasion and I realized what a challenge it is to eat well alone.

Getting groceries from the market and cooking a nice meal singlehandedly wasn’t really the issue, these are things I often take on. The challenge was really coming up with a reason to make a delicious meal when I was just going to eat it by myself. For me the dinner table is a great time to share in enjoyment of good food and to let other interesting topics entertain us while we eat.

The part of cooking for myself that I don’t love is that you make the effort (mess) of cooking and then have to clean up after yourself as well. This is a strong motivator to make something that you can eat for a couple of meals. I don’t mind the work of meals but there is a point where if you cooked and cleaned every night, the dinner out of a frozen box would get more and more appealing and that just doesn’t seem worth it to me.

For the first few days on my own, the evening meal became more of a chore of just filling me up with whatever I could piece together. Then, after days of so so dinners, I decided to just go all out and make a dinner I would be proud to share, and just enjoy it alone.

The roast has a lot going for it: It is easy to do well, comes from affordable cuts of meat (or a whole small bird), is pretty much hands-off, lasts for leftovers, and, best of all, makes gravy!

My first solo-roast was actually a beautiful little chicken from Soul Food Farm. I made a gravy from the drippings and proceeded to eat that with the best chicken bits with my hands, standing at the counter. It must have been the messy fingers that kept me from taking a picture to share. The meat from the breasts went into curry and chicken soup. The carcass made the best, richest broth I’ve ever had. It was a $10 four pound bird, but it made itself very useful.

Not all my meals from my time alone have been such undertakings. One of my favorite things has been how long leftover rice lasts. One of my jobs currently is selling rice at the farmer’s markets and I often get customers who don’t want to buy a 2lbs bag because they are on their own. I often make 2 cups (about half that bag) and eat it as instant meals throughout the week. A filling and quick standby is something I learned from a friend (and future sister in-law): A layer of cooked brown rice in a cast-iron skillet over medium-low heat. Crack an egg per person (just one in this case, and I used my tiny six inch skillet for a single serving) over the rice and cover with a lid. Cook until just before the egg is set to the firmness you like and grate some nice cheese on top. I use a raw Monterey Jack. The rice gets nice and crispy on the bottom and the whole mess is very satisfyingly simple.

I have a new favorite dish of baked beets marinaded in red wine vinegar and olive oil. It isn’t the most popular dish for others, so it made sense to make it more while alone. Beets and their greens are exceptionally nutritious, full of valuable vits and mins and very good to eat together. I chose to put the greens in the fritatta rather than mixing with the beets themselves, but the sweet and bitter of roots and tops do set eachother off well if you choose to combine.

(this fritatta was actually terrible, as I didn’t rinse the greens enough and ended up with crunchy eggs…yuck.)

My other strategy for eating alone was to keep flowers on the table. It helped in a funny way.

My solo eating adventures can now come to an end, as well as my lack of attention to Mind to Mouth. I have two weeks before I leave for the Great Walk North and even through that I plan to discuss eating and living well…just on the road and on foot. So apologies for the canvernous gap in posts and thanks for the fact that it mattered to many!