Good cookbooks for singles?

All -

In an effort to stop eating out for a majority of meals I am trying to cook more and more at home. One of my efforts is to try more new recipes, however I find that most of the cookbooks I have require me to buy a lot of ingredients that don't overlap with the week of planning i have done. My question to all of you that are single or had this same dilemma: have you found any good blogs or cookbooks, that are aimed at singles that focus on planning for a week?

One other note, have any of you stumbled onto any great new cookbooks that do nto deal with too complex of ingredients that might be good to work my way through?

Thanks!

You might check out Jacques Pepin's "Cooking with Claudine" and "Encore with Claudine".

http://www.amazon.com/Jacques-Pepins-Ki ... 266&sr=8-1

http://www.amazon.com/Jacques-Pepins-Ki ... pd_sim_b_1

These are based on their PBS series from the late 1990s. Claudine is Jacques' daughter and the series was aimed at people in their 20s or early 30s, living on a budget. I haven't used the books in a while, but I have good memories of them. Check out the on-line table of contents on Amazon, esp for the first book.

One way to deal with this is to look for cookbooks/recipes that produce a lot of leftovers, like braises, stews, curries, casseroles, etc.. I saw one recently in a book store from America's Test Kitchen.

Dave Lieberman, once of Food Network, did a cookbook called "Young and Hungry" with some relatively simple, but good dishes aimed toward getting 20 somethings to cook for themselves as opposed to getting takeout. From that same source, Tyler Florence's "Real Kitchen" tends to stick to introductory to moderate dishes, too, like roast lemon chicken.

http://www.foodnetworkstore.com/HostSho ... n+cookbook

http://www.foodnetworkstore.com/s-66-Ty ... 0cookbooks

Here's an interesting blog on the subject: Cooking for One

Most times, cooking for one (or one and one-half, as I do at least every third day) isn't very difficult: it's shopping for one that's a challenge. It's easy to make a single portion of protein, veg, and starch - but they don't make it easy for you to buy just one portion. It's not impossible, however - for instance, you could ask at the counter to get a package of meat split into a single-serve portion, or you can always repackage and freeze when you get home. Produce is usually more expensive the smaller you get it (one potato can cost as much as a 3 lb bag,) so you have to decide where the point of diminishing returns is: how much will you throw away as opposed to the higher cost of buying just one. Pastas, rice, and beans keep forever - though you'll have to have a strategy for using up a can (you can always make bean dip for snacks with the leftovers) Dairy actually keeps a while, and egg dishes are terrific for quick meals for one.

You might want to invest in a good toaster-oven (it seems silly to heat up your entire oven to roast a leg/thigh pinwheel, but you can do it in a toaster oven quite easily.) Other than that, if you think about it, most simple meals don't involve portions at all: you make the recipe and add on or reduce servings as you go, think steak, fish, chicken, pork chop, hamburger, sausage. Then you just add a side: a broccoli spear, a handful of green beans or peas, baked beans, buttered noodles or rice, a baked potato.

When I was single I found a friend at work who was also single. We would trade leftovers - we each would bring in a package or two in those reheatable containers every few days and swap. This is also helpful for produce that you buy that might go bad if you don't use it up.

Freezing is also good. Use freezer bags for ingredients and plastic reheatable containers for leftover meals.

This is such a common problem for many of us who are single but love to cook. With many dishes, like risotto which I made last week, it's hard to make a small/single portion, and there's only so much you can give away, freeze (I have a small freezer so I have to be careful about what I choose to store in it), or even eat in a week. I haven't come up with a good answer to this one yet, so I'm no help here.

But when it comes to proteins, I usually buy them at the meat counter instead of in pre-packed containers. It's usually the same cost per pound, but I can specify exactly how much ground turkey (sometimes just 6 ounces if I'm going to make one burger) I want or number of slices of bacon or one or two chicken breasts. On many occasions I've purchased just one slice of bacon if I'm going to use it in a dish. Yes, I get strange looks from the worker behind the counter, and again during checkout, but it usually costs something like $0.49 at Whole Foods and I'm not wasting any.

J, I didn't read your initial post right: you're looking for a weekly meal planner more than for a cookbook, right? I have also been looking for this, in the hopes that our grocery bills will go down if I plan better. I haven't as yet found one I like.

However, a google search I just did right now shows that Aldi has a free meal planner/calendar here. I signed up and will report back. There are a number of softwares you can buy that do this (and most of them scale recipes) but I've never tried them as they're fairly expensive, some require a subscription. I think that several women's magazines offer a meal planner calendar, but I can never find them when I'm looking for them.

Laugh if you will, but I thought of this thread as I perused this week's freebie Whole Foods newsletter (available online here), which has a section on cooking for one with a recipe or two included. Of course, it makes use of 365 Everyday Value products.

Since the point of this newsletter is to help shoppers save money, I would hope they would feature the 365 Brand. I also think it's really cool that they give you a estimated cost per serving. This is probably the most useful newsletter I've seen from a big box grocer, ever. Thanks for sharing.

That is a pretty good newsletter. I've been following the Whole Foods Blog for the occasional tip but the newsletter is even better.

As for cookbooks, I recommend Penelope Casas' Foods and Wines of Spain. Most of the recipes are short and call for only a few pantry staples (good olive oil, garlic, and paprika). Some of the tapas recipes are also for single-serving portions.

I've been living on patatas pobres (poor man's potatoes) and crusty bread for a good part of a week now.

Pepin's "Fast Food My Way" series/book is also great. The recipes are easily scalable for one or two. I've made many a meal from it.

The Everyday Food monthly magazine from Martha Stewart usually includes at least one idea for cooking-for-one or cooking-for-two. These are generally a quick, healthy two- or three-item menus for dinner.

For example, the current Nov 08 Everyday Food issue features "Pan-seared chicken with shallot and carrots" which looks a lovely thing to sit down to at the end of the day for one person. And it is a five-ingredient recipe.

Here is a portal to the section of the Everyday Food website that features some of these recipes. It is a thumbnail page that leads to large photos and recipes. They call it "Everyday Food For One" on the website.

--Joy

PS: Thanks very much to aschie30 for the tip about the Whole Foods newsletter! They did a good job, didn't they?

Check the event board in the next day or two - I'm going to post about an idea I have for an LTH small (1-2 person) household food exchange.