When you live alone, cooking yourself can become complicated. Even though the food industry is increasingly adapting to individual portions, with smaller packaging and containers, it still remains difficult to find certain products and to organize with certain foods.
According to provisional data from the National Statistics Institute until January 1, 2024, almost five and a half million people live alone in Spain, representing 28% of all households. A context which, according to a projection of households in the years 2024-2039, would continue to increase with some 7.7 million isolated households, or 33.5% of the total.
In this scenario, and although living alone can mean more freedom to choose not only what to eat but also when, it can pose certain challenges, such as overcoming the laziness of cooking yourself, repeating the same meal for several days or finding small formats that don’t force us to throw away more food than we should.
And when you have to cook for just one person, it’s tempting to settle for anything; and if we cook large portions of food, we will be faced with eating the same thing day after day, unless we have a good freezer that we can use to store the excess portions we have prepared.
How to make a purchase for yourself
The first tip, although not new, is perhaps one of the most important. And this will also be recurring when planning the menu. We are talking about planning the purchase, which is the typical shopping list, in which we will write down everything we need. This way, not only will we not forget anything, but we won’t buy anything we don’t need – we need to be careful with typical 2×1 ads, as they can lead us to buy things we don’t need. no need. really needed.
We must keep in mind that a good list is no good if it is not complete. This requires us to take a good look at the pantry, refrigerator or freezer. If, when creating the list, we categorize products – cleaning products first, non-perishable products second, and fresh and frozen products last – this will allow us to be more efficient.
In this sense, it will help us a lot to plan meals in which we use the same ingredients in different ways, like a bag of spinach, which we can use for many recipes: in an omelette, in a salad or with pasta for dinner.
By planning the menu, it is also easier to organize the shopping list: we eliminate any temptation to buy what we don’t need and we only stock up on the portions we need. In this sense, if we live alone we can use these tips so that eating does not seem boring and monotonous and we can have a healthy diet without having to throw away a lot of food.
Prepare a unique dish
Preparing a first course and a second when you live alone increases the complexity. It is easier to opt for a unique and balanced dish. Like the single plate model of the Spanish Society of Dietetics and Food Sciences (SEDCA), which offers options such as a third of the plate being vegetable based – the more colors the better East ; a third in the form of protein foods, both of plant origin such as legumes and of animal origin, such as eggs, fish or seafood. Another third of the plate should consist of foods rich in carbohydrates, such as cereals, preferably whole grains.
Cook more than one meal at a time
This advice, like the one called batch cookingor “batch cooking”, no matter how much we repeat it, it doesn’t make it any less important. In fact, it may be one of those that will help us the most because preparing three or four extra servings of any dish allows us to freeze them and have them for future meals. Here we can include both a side dish, such as a stir-fry, as well as three or four portions of a good broth that we can prepare throughout the week.
If we package it in individual portions and write the preparation date on it, we can have a nice dinner just by opening the freezer door. In this sense, for example, since preparing a lasagna for one person can be a lot of work, we can divide it and freeze it to have it for future meals.
Buy in bulk
You can buy fresh fruit such as bananas or apples in bulk, individually, and some supermarkets even prepare packages of various fruits. This is perhaps the hardest part of living alone because it is not advisable to fill the entire bowl with fruit to the top; If we only eat one or two fruits a day, it is better to buy enough to be able to consume it. This will also ensure that the products are as fresh as possible.
Have a well-stocked pantry
This part is essential to have some basic products at home, such as oil, salt, legumes, rice or cereals, flour, spices or canned goods. Frozen vegetables have the same benefits as fresh vegetables, without the need for prior preparation or waste because we can only use the quantity needed. They can also be served as a garnish or added to soups, stews or sauces.
Cook a variety of recipes using similar ingredients
If we have planned the purchase and the menus well, this point will be very easy for us to achieve. This will save us from having to repeat the same dishes over and over again. For example, if we buy chicken, we can eat it in a thousand and one ways: grilled with spices, in curry, in a tomato salad, among many other options.
Divide the quantity of recipe ingredients
If you are a little observant, you will see that most of the recipes are designed for at least four people. To avoid having an absurd amount of leftovers if you want to make one, there is a simple solution: divide the recipes in two, or even by three if they are designed for six. This will allow us to prepare only the number of portions we need.
Divide the contents of large containers
It can also be frustrating to have to buy certain foods in large quantities, such as a loaf of bread, because it can take a long time to finish them. So it is very important to store them properly so that they last longer. If we divide them, we will have won the battle. We can store bread, for example, in the freezer but not before cutting it into slices so that we can remove only the quantity we need.
It can also be difficult to purchase meat in individual portions. In this case we can divide it into individual portions and then freeze them. This way we will also avoid having to defrost half a kilo of minced meat at once.
