I enjoy eating. And I enjoy cooking. I wouldn’t want to do it every day—let’s not get crazy—but lately Jesse finally acquiesced and handed me the Tuesday dinner baton. (It helped that he was coaching Deacon’s soccer team and didn’t walk in the door until well after 6:30. Desperation breeds delegation.)
My Tuesday specialty quickly became soup because everyone seemed to eat at different times anyway. My chicken noodle soup is nothing fancy, just honest comfort food. I learned long ago to serve the cooked noodles—or rice—on the side so they don’t bloat into sad broth-sponges. One grandson likes mostly broth, the other prefers to shovel in mostly noodles, and the rest of us land somewhere in between. So it was a Tuesday night win-win-win-win.
Then I tried homemade marinara with a small pasta buffet: spaghetti? penne? both? They even liked gnocchi, which made me feel like Giada for at least five minutes. Some nights I put out a little salad smorgasbord — lettuce, cukes, carrots, celery, olives, nuts, cheese, protein — giving everyone the illusion of choice. Works like a charm.
But today’s topic isn’t about feeding a family of five. It’s those wonderful, rare evenings when I want to cook just for me.
Years ago I stumbled onto a website called One Dish Kitchen. It’s run by a husband/wife team, and I swear her email newsletters could talk me into cooking things I didn’t even know I wanted. Her introductions are charming and her tips for using up leftover ingredients are pure gold. She’s on Facebook, Instagram, and—if I could subscribe hourly, I probably would.
Here’s my guilty pleasure: every so often I send my family on little overnight (or two or three) road trips. Go, be free! Drive somewhere! Eat snacks! And once the house is blissfully quiet, I suddenly have the energy to do a project. (Never again oven-cleaning. That was traumatic. This time maybe the pantry.)
But here’s the key: when I get into project mode, I don’t want to stop and cook. So I’ve been slowly creating a tiny stash of single-serve casseroles. Years ago I bought myself a cute 5”×5” casserole dish from One Dish Kitchen—white, simple, and apparently invisible, because whenever someone empties the dishwasher, it disappears into the Bermuda Triangle of our overcrowded cabinets.
So yesterday I treated myself. I ordered a three-piece set in bright, unapologetic RED:
- a 5” square baking dish,
- a 10-ounce ramekin,
- and a 5”×7” casserole dish (technically for one… or two… or a very hungry me).
I'm hoping the RED will ensure these items get back to the Grandma kitchen shelf I keep a few kitchen items on the shelves in my room. So I can easily find them again. The citrus juicer. The bottle opener. Large serving platters. A soup tureen.
And last but not least—my secret weapon—I always keep a few ready-to-eat single servings of protein in the freezer. On those nights when the mood strikes, I just grab one, defrost it, warm it up, toss it onto a giant salad, and pat myself on the back for being both practical and deliciously self-sufficient.
Sometimes cooking for one feels like a little love note to myself.
And honestly? I’m starting to think I deserve more of those.
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