Here's a 2 serving recipe that would be a piece of cake to shrink down or just eat lots of the relish on one fish filet. You could probaby easily reduce the oil and I would definitely use canola or olive instead of vegetable. Try tossing together the relish in the morning and dinner won't be but a few minutes away when you get home! Haven't tried this yet but picked up some frozen cod at Costco over the weekend so this will definitely be appearing on my plate next week!

Peg

Grilled Fish with Tomato Dill Relish
Serves 2

1 cups fresh tomatoes, diced
1/4 cup red onion, diced
1/4 cup cucumber, diced
2 tablespoons fresh dill, diced
1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
salt and pepper to taste
2 fish fillets, fresh or frozen (about 1/2 pound)
-- use a firm-fleshed fish

To make relish, in a bowl mix together all ingredients except
fish; refrigerate for at least one hour.

Preheat barbecue grill, George Foreman, or oven broiler.

Grill fish over coals till it flakes easily when tested with a
fork, about 3 minutes per side.

Top fish with relish.

Per Serving: 285 Calories; 9g Fat (27.7% calories from fat); 42g
Protein; 9g Carbohydrate; 1g Dietary Fiber; 99mg Cholesterol;
134mg Sodium. Exchanges: 5 1/2 Lean Meat; 1 Vegetable; 0 Fruit;
1 1/2 Fat.

Hey guys! I don't want to let this thread die! I need this thread!

In the spirit, here is my weeknight "I don't want spaghetti leftovers in the fridge or i will eat them" dinner:

1 serving of pasta:

I use organic whole wheat pasta from whole foods, but any pasta will do.

For long thin noodles, i use one of those serving measurers. For smaller shapes, i use either a food scale or measuring cups. I can probably eyeball it, but I am a recovering noodle-addict. So I do it every time.

I am also math impaired (especially fractions) but an easy way to split it up when you have a new bag/box is to split the amount in half, split that amount in half, and (finally) halve it once more. You can separate them out in some way and have 1 serving whenever you need it.

3/4 to 1 cup tomato sauce....depending on your tastes. Sometimes it's nice to make a batch of real sauce up on a weekend and freeze it in one cup portions for later. Easy Peasy. I throw in a bit of italian seasoning and a dash of red pepper flakes sometimes.

The obligatory VEGGIES:

Staples for me are: 1 small/medium zucchini or yellow squash, 1/2 small onion, 1 clove garlic, a handful of slices mushrooms. Slice em and dice em anyway you like. Try and get them to be similar sizes so you can cook it quicker.

Nice additions are bell peppers, grated carrots, eggplant, or a few black olives.

Optional Meat: 3-4 oz

Good choice -- Very lean ground beef

Better choice -- Incredibly lean ground chicken/turkey with 1-3g per serving of fat

Best choice -- 1/2 package of the Boca Burger Crumbles

So goes my opinion...

Optional Cheese: 1 tablespoon. Fresh grated > bagged in the cheese aisle grated > the weird stuff in the green bottle, in my opinion.

And you're off....

boil the water. Put the pasta in for 8-10 minutes. meanwhile, cook up all your veggies. once they have softened a bit, add your 1 cup sauce and let it simmer. strain the noodles and throw em in the pan. top with your cheese. eat.

Looks like a lotta calories....isn't.

Ps: it's possible to do this super-lazy-style and used bagged veggies. saute them until they arent so frozen and throw on the sauce. it's basically the same, not quite as tasty.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Kara,

Kara

Thought I'd throw in my smoothie recipe:
1/3 c juice (I usually use cran raspberry 100% juice), 1/3 c. soy milk (I try to use unsweetened), 1/3 c. plain soy yogurt. I put that in the blender and then add enough frozen berry blend (a mix of blueberries, blackberries and raspberries I get at the warehouse shopping place, Costco) to fill up the liquid area plus sticking up a little in the blender. I would guess it's somewhere around 1-1 1/2 c. berries. Blend it up and you get a super thick and creamy smoothie. Sometimes I add a bit of frozen banana too. Enjoy!

Peg

I buy a lot of bagged frozen fruit (the fresh stuff gets eaten too fast) and keep the open bags in a closed freezer bag in the freezer.

A really simple, easy smoothie for me is about 1/2 c of plain yogurt, 1/2 c of fruit, a splash of milk, and a tiny bit of assorted extracts (like almond extract with peaches, orange extract with raspberries, vanilla with cherries, etc). I'll add a bit of honey or Splenda if it needs it, but some fruit combinations don't.

I like keeping all my partially empty bags of frozen vegetables together in one larger freezer bag, and the same with the partially empty bags of fruit. For someone who likes variety, it's fun to pull out a bag and think, "Hmmmm. . .well, we can do a handful of raspberries AND a handful of blackberries!" or "Ooooh, butter beans would be nice. . so would green beans. . .ohhh, but what about sugar snap peas?"

I stop at the freezer section every time I'm at the grocery store to see if there are any vegetables that sound good or any new fruit (my store doesn't seem to have the same frozen fruit each week).

A tip on spices & seasoning mixes. . . .we make our own, and store them in containers. This year, for holiday gifts, we're going to write out recipe cards for some of them, package them nicely with personalized labels ("<our name>'s Texas Spice Rub", "<our name>'s Sweet and Hot Rub", etc), and give them as gifts. So buying the stuff we need for the mixes in large quantities won't be a waste

D

A couple of new things to try for single cooking. Last week I invested in a grill pan...wonderful for grilling your meat, veggies and everything in one pan for dinner...and fast too. I drop a meat in a marinade in the morning, sometimes do veggies in a seperate marinate as well...then they are ready to go when I get home from the Y at night for a fast...15 mins from coming in the door to sitting down at the table...cook up.

Another is that I got a Penzy's spice catalogue in the mail. They have a huge variety of pre-mixed spice combinations to use for meats and vegies and bases for marinade. I think I am going to experiement with a few...they also have a website..do a serch on their name...prices are pretty reasonable too, i think.

Another one I discovered this week, and may be obvious to those who freeze things regularly...but I have been having trouble with getting enough variety of some kinds of fruit (cherries, grapes, melon) and then getting them eaten before they go bad on me. Bananas too...With only 3 servings of fruit a day, I sometimes overbuy cause I love grapes and cherries and melon and these are usually prepackaged in my market and melon is well naturally prepackaged

...so I tried freezing them, even the melon and then using them in my smoothies, instead of adding as much ice, just throw in the frozen fruit. And for the melon, don't use milk, use water and a little lemon or lime juice for more of an icee/slurpy kind of drink. Also fresh mint leaves with watermelon and lime are wonderful together....I suppose that you could even then freeze the slush again for a kind of sorbet/italian ice kind of thing as well.

jackie

I am married but when my husband is out of town I find myself cooking for one. Last summer. He was gone for a few months. My friends (single) and I got together every night for dinner. We would rotate houses. One night would be my night so I would make dinner for everyone. The next night would be someone elses night. This helped everyones grocery bill, there were no left overs to keep up with, and we got to see each other a lot.

quote:

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Originally posted by Carol:
Just though of this, and maybe someone can help me, why do Manufactures make a lot of canned goods example: Black,Cannoli, Kidney Beans and Refried beans

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Carol,
A couple of thoughts:
1. The beans keep a really long time in the fridge. I just used some beans that I opened at least 10 days ago and they were just fine. You probably have longer to use them than you might think.
2. Try making your own from dried. Then you can make exactly what you need. KD's first book talks a lot about how to make beans and it really is pretty easy. Plus they're cheap if you screw them up the first few times.

Peg

I am so happy that we have started this thread! I wanted to pop on and start contributing while I had a minute. I will be sure to post more soon. Anyway, I love lasagna. It's a love affair with me. I can do alright portioning out one serving, but i always seem to come back and eat a ton of it late at night. I came up with this compromise. Lighter lasagna, less leftovers. Here was my solution:

"Single in the City" basic lasagna

3 uncooked lasagna noodles (i prefer barilla no boil lasagna sheets)
1 cup fat free ricotta
2-3 oz low fat mozzarella
1 32 oz can crushed tomatoes
1/2 onion, diced
1 garlic clove, diced
2 tablespoons parmesan
1/4 cup wine of your choice
italian seasonings
1 egg white, beaten or a splash of egg beaters

spray a pan with olive or canola oil very quickly. Over medium heat, cook the onion until it begins to soften a bit. Add in the garlic. Cook for about 2 minutes more. It's OK if it starts to become golden on the bottom of the pan, but don't let it burn. Remove the pan from the burner and add in the wine. Deglaze the pan by using a spoon to scrape up all the bits. place it over the heat again and let it simmer to burn off the alcohol. Add the can of tomatoes and italian seasoning. If you like a little kick, add a small splash of red pepper flakes. Let this simmer while you mix the ricotta, egg white, parmesan, and 1 ounce of the cheese together. Turn off the sauce. Add 1 ladleful of sauce to the bottom of a meat loaf pan. place a noodle on top. Smear the noodle with 1/3 of the ricotta mixture. Add some more sauce and repeat. For the final noodle, put the sauce down first. Dot the top with the remaining ricotta. Sprinkle the rest of the mozzarella cheese on top. You want to use way more sauce during this process than looks necessary. You may not use up the ENTIRE batch, but really give the pan a good amount of sauce to work with. Cover the top with foil and bake for approx 45 minutes. The noodles should have expanded, and the pan should look much fuller. Test how long it takes for them to be fully cooked in your oven. Bake the last 5 mins with the foil off. This will give you about 3 servings -- way better than having an entire sheet pan full of lasagna to wrestle with late at night.

Now for the variations:

1/4 pound of ground meat of your choice. Lean chicken and turkey definitely work here. Beef can work too. I buy the leanest kind they have and rinse it in hot water after with a very fine strainer. (I am trying to limit my sat fats, though.) Oh, italian turkey sausage taken out of the casing is greeeeat.

Garden style (my favorite): add 1/4 cup cooked spinach to the ricotta mix, with a tiny bit of nutmeg. Add whatever veggies you like. Zucchini and yellow squash, grated carrots, bell peppers...you name it, you can probably get away with it. I saute them separately and make them their own layer.

White lasagna: You can make a classic white sauce, but I am far too lazy for all of that. I use a can of low fat creamy mushroom soup, melted down in a pan with a little bit of FF milk. I still add the veggies to this one. Particularly the spinach. I like this better with a sharp parmesan as half the mozzarella, though.

Fiesta Style: Ground meat, no ricotta, salsa and mexican seasonings added to the tomatoes instead of wine and italian. I use Sargento LF cheddar for this one. Lots of bell peppers too.

Ok, I think that's enough lasagna to make any girl satisfied!

Note: In a pinch, yes, you definitely can use store bought sauce! This way takes literally 5 minutes, though, and I think is much better.

Kara

Hiya!

Have you ever been to the 30daygourmet website? They have portion break downs for freezing foods, and you can use your own recipes to freeze or prepare ahead of time. I have started to freeze the extra servings of chili, spicy beef stir fry, and crustless quiche that I make. That way I am not stuck with the same thing every day, plus, after a few weeks of this, I can go one or two weeks without cooking at all. The superstore near me has these little containers for freezing (lined with foil), and I put brown rice on the bottom, and the stir fry on top. Easy portion control, I never have to think about it again.

[QUOTE] why do Manufactures make a lot of canned goods in the large cans,QUOTE]

I am not sure what you consider large cans, but here I can get the beans in normal sized cans, the size of all the veggies..what are they 8oz or something. Even still, if I am making a mixed bean salad or something, I find I have leftovers....one way I use them is to throw them into my salad for lunches. Another way is to puree them (white cannilini beans or garbanzos) with a small amount of tahini, garlic, lemon juice and water and use as a veg dip. Other beans, such as red beans, pinto beans, or black beans you can puree the same way, experiment with the spices and herbs you like and make dips out of them. For black beans I mix in a bit of carribean spices mix, a little water, and lime juice. Also you can puree pintos with a little taco or mexican blend, lime and water to thin and use it like refried beans. Sometimes I also add salt to these depending on the brand of beans I buy. Beans can also be frozen too...but then I personally only like to use them in soups as I think the texture changes.

jackie

If you can afford one of those machines that wraps your food and takes the air out.. they are great... gives you so much more room, the food stays fresh.. and so easy to reheat. You can get them for about $40 now.. When I was single. I did like some here... cook a chicken and make it last..roasted for first day, salad second.. soup third, etc.. but I always made myself a tv dinner and stored.. (even though my freezer was small too) eventually I had enought tv dinners to not cook for a whole week... that was my favorite week.. I still do that with a family of 5.. I take one meal out with each meal and freeze it. Then one day a week, everyone can pick from a tv dinner and I don't have to cook.. not awhole week but I do enjoy that day!!! The kids love it.. we do it like a lottery... draw numbers, I take the first dinner out and give it to number one.. then the same for number two.. he can keep it or change with number one.. and so forth.. dad and I go last.. and can kind of judge if someone got something they really don't like, and we change with them. the kids love it.. sorry kind of got off the single/cooking for one track.. Cindy

Just though of this, and maybe someone can help me, why do Manufactures make a lot of canned goods example: Black,Cannoli, Kidney Beans and Refried beans in the large cans, don't they know that not everyone has a family, there are alot of people out there that are single,(including Sr's) they are O.K if you are making a soup,I hate buying some of this stuff and have to use it all up in a week, after a few days I get tired of eating it and end up throwing it out (more money down the drain)

Maybe one of these days, I will wright a letter to some of these companies and suggest they should make smaller size cans.... (probably won't do any good)

Last night was "fend for yourself night." I lucked out. Earlier in the day, the folks had made a sam's club run, and came back with all sorts of fancy goodies.

I had two small slices of artisan bread, toasted, w/dijon, smoked salmon, a lil bit of brie, and tomatoes + a bottle of water.

Tonight I hope to *finally* make the fried plantains I planned on making Friday for my Cuban dinner's dessert.

My dinner last night was a good example of creatively re-using food. I had a big salad with arugula, smoked red pepper, smoked corn (have I mentioned I love having a smoker?), half an avocado, and some roasted chicken from earlier in the week.

I do have a tendency to morph foods a lot, being single.

Catherine

One doesn't have to be one to enjoy this thread. I am the ONLY one in my house routinely following a healthy eating plan. I've gained much info from this thread about being a single in the city. Great ideas. Thanks so much.

quote:

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Originally posted by Carol:
But my biggest problem is the spices and herbs and vinegar’s most recipes are for 4 or more and they might say use 1/8tsp of something or 1/3 cup of something , so how do you break that down for either 1 or 2 servings.

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I have a fridge magnet that has all sorts of divisions of measure so if I was trying to divide the 1/3 cup, I might look on there to see how many ozs, tblspoons or teaspoons add up to 1/3 c. and divide that instead of the 1/3 c. Now the 1/8 of tsp, you are just going to want to use a 'dash' because an 1/8 of a tsp is an itty bitty amount. I have seen those sorts of magnets in kitchen gadget stores. Here's an online resource: http://www.globalgourmet.com/cgi-bin/hts?convcalc.hts+usequiv+new and you could just print it out for yourself if you didn't want to pay for one.

Hope that helps!

Peg

This message has been edited. Last edited by: p7eggyc,

Here's one I made last night (variation of one I saw on TV). We ate it warm, but I saved about 1/4 of the shrimp to have on a salad today for lunch. I'll post it as a recipe for 2, but keep in mind that half of it can be refrigerated & eaten the next day.

3/4 lb shrimp (smallish size, either frozen & defrosted or fresh, deveined & peeled)
1/2 minced sweet onion
2 cloves minced garlic
2 pinches of dried parsley or small bunch of fresh parsley, chopped
2 pinches dried basil
dollop of dijon mustard
pinch of kosher salt, pinch of pepper
1/4 c olive oil
1/4 c white wine vinegar
1/4 c cold water

Mix all the stuff together and let the shrimp marinate an hour or so. Throw it all into a hot pan and cook the shrimp 2-3 minutes or so on each side, then remove the shrimp to a plate. Let the "sauce" reduce to however thick or thin you like it, then spoon it over the shrimp and eat warm; save 1/2 the shrimp and "sauce" and refrigerate, serve over a salad the next day.

The original recipe called for the shrimp to be skewered & grilled, and it's probably wonderful, and you could still reduce the sauce for a salad the next day with the leftover grilled shrimp. Just use large enough shrimp that you can run a skewer through them

With the other half of the onion, put a couple of Tbl of cold water in a ziploc bag and set the onion in it, store in your vegetable drawer. The water keeps the onion crispy a bit longer.


Something I've begun doing is breaking the garlic cloves apart into individual cloves and storing them in a ziploc bag in the pantry. I can reach in and quickly grab a garlic clove or two, however many I need.

Other variations of this recipe can use bay scallops or cubed chicken instead of shrimp (or probably even cubed firm tofu); lemon or lime juice for the vinegar; dill instead of basil; white wine instead of vinegar; different mustards for different flavors.

D

Wow these are all GREAT ideas...such a creative group you all are! Keep the ideas coming. Also I thought that maybe we could also start posting recipes we have worked out for 1-2 servings as well. I will try to get some of mine down for you in the next few nights...I have to look through my cookbooks first.

Carol made a good point about not knowing how to use herbs and seasonings. This is something that I have been learning and having fun with. Sometimes when I find a recipe that I think I will like I will make the recipe as is so I know how it should taste, then next time I can adapt it for 1 by either halving the ingrediants or using pinches...but the secret is to taste as you go...I know for us loosing weight that can seem like a pitfall, but if you watch the tv shows a taste is as small as sticking your spoon (or finger) and just tasting the coating on it...what you are testing is the flavor, not trying to get a bite...like I used to think...sometimes by the end of cooking I had eating half a serving!!

Another thing I learned from watching KD was to taste and smell your herbs...knowing what they taste like will tell you how much you like a herb and how much you will want to use. Also trial and error..sometimes you will use too much or too little...here is where jotting a note or two down in your cookbook will help to remind you next time you cook the dish. Also I find it easier to experiment with fresh herbs than dried ones...you can use a lot more fresh herbs before you mess up something, but dried herbs are more concentrated...and I don't think that they taste as good for the most part. The best way to learn to cook with herbs to to just start...experiement, use small amounts at first untill you learn what you like, try new herbs, and have fun!

jackie

No Room in Your Refridgerator? Try this method. I freeze everything flat in freezer bags. You could easily fit 30 pounds of food in a small "over the fridge" freezer. I do it all the time. The key is to freeze it flat. You can put the bag on a cookie sheet or cake pan in your freezer until it hardens then remove the pan.

My problem with cooking for ONE isn’t portioning the meats, fish etc, it is I never know what I want to do with them, I for some reason can never plan my meals for the week cause I never know what I will be in the mood for.

An example: About 1 month ago I was in the mood for a real meatloaf, I bought 1# made it and sliced it up, had it for dinner and then a cold sandwich the next day, froze the rest and it is still sitting in the freezer, no longer in the mood for it, so will probably just dump it(money down the drain)

But my biggest problem is the spices and herbs and vinegar’s most recipes are for 4 or more and they might say use 1/8tsp of something or 1/3 cup of something , so how do you break that down for either 1 or 2 servings. I guess I could wing it, but then again I could have too much of something or not enough, especially if is something I have never used before so I wouldn’t know which one would need more of. Or what it should taste like…

I have always been the type of person who needs specific amount of ingrediance to start with and then after it is made I can adjust the next time if needed . So can anyone help me with my problems???

Thanking you now, Incase I don't get back to thank you