Cooking for One: Lunchtime at my House

Since it's just me for lunch at home, five days a week, I find it difficult to get motivated to stop whatever I'm doing, and cook myself a proper meal. I've come up with four types of lunches, for me that are working.

• the "desperately hungry, but no time to stand in the kitchen to cook, and don't want to wash any dishes" lunch. This consists of a slice of whole wheat bread, spread with peanut butter (natural-style chunky is my fave), and then topped with additional peanuts. It's really quite tasty and filling. The bonus is I don't put this on a plate, but use my cloth napkin from the table, and the only other thing I dirty is the knife used to spread the peanut butter.

• meal on a plate (or in a bowl, just not in plastic or food storage containers). When I'm serving up dinner, if there's enough leftover, I serve myself an extra plate or bowl of whatever is on the menu that night. I cover this serving and put it in the fridge. At lunchtime the next day, I reheat my meal in the microwave. It's ready in 1 minute, with zero fuss. I don't even have storage or reheating containers to wash. My plate, or bowl, goes into the dishwasher. These are my favorite lunch meals. They are better than commercial, frozen meals, in that I get to eat my good cooking, and on good dishes, not out of plastic.

• almost-instant soup for one. Earlier this month, I bought a bunch of ingredients from the bulk section to make almost-instant soups. These are the same ingredients that I bought to make soup mixes to give as Christmas gifts. I bought dried onion flakes, a bean and tortilla soup mix, chicken soup base powder, dried cheese tortellinis, dried vegetable soup mix, and some Parmesan cheese. I combine various ingredients in my pot, along with extra chili powder, cumin, oregano, basil, garlic powder, salt and water, and cook. With some of the soups I make, I also add some canned tomatoes, or tomato sauce, and/or, top with the remnants of a bag of tortilla chips that I've stashed in a cupboard. These are delicious and I look forward to making them for myself. The hands-on time is under 5 minutes, and cooking can take 30 or so minutes, but I can be doing something else during that time. The cost per bowl of soup is about 35 cents.

• hot dog from the freezer or an egg, scrambled or boiled, along with some sort of starchy side dish, such as a corn tortilla, slice of bread, or a leftover baked potato. Not at all fancy, but it's enough to fill me, something I will enjoy eating, I always have this on hand at home, and it keeps me from getting take-out when I'm coming home from appointments or running errands.

If you're at home, every day by yourself, how do you manage your own lunches?

Cheap & Cheerful Menus for a Mid-January Week

Thursday's quick and easy supper of eggs, bacon, bagels and stewed prunes

Friday
Leftover-palooza
We needed to eat through a bunch of leftovers, so I changed up the menu for tonight's dinner.

• leftover rice and lentils from last Saturday, mixed with leftover black beans from a week ago, and canned tomatoes, from the can I opened last Sunday, some salsa, and some black olives, heated in a skillet with beef fat from the freezer, and some oil (to mute the beef fat flavor)
• leftover stewed prunes from Thursday, mixed with 1 banana, sliced, for fruit cups, for 3 of the family, and 1 dish of leftover blackberry-rhubarb sauce for the other person
• steamed broccoli, the last crown of broccoli, bought a week ago and needed cooking

Saturday

It was my husband's turn to cook, again. I was gone for the afternoon and came home a few minutes before dinner was ready. He's doing okay with the cooking, by the way. He asked for suggestions, on Friday. I gave him a couple of suggestions. He decided to choose his own path.

• brown rice
• refried beans
• fried corn tortillas and salsa
• carrot and celery sticks, plus bleu cheese dressing

Sunday

• chili made with a chicken breast, that I had thawed the day before and wasn't used, in place of turkey as I'd planned, simmered with canned tomatoes, green peppers, onions, pinto beans and seasonings
• scratch cornbread
• tangerines
• cookies (these ones, but I didn't get around to dipping them in white chocolate

Monday

Mostly a repeat from Sunday's dinner

• leftover chili, stretched with lentils today
• leftover cornbread
• smoothies of orange juice, cranberry sauce and pumpkin

Tuesday

• baked potatoes, topped with a diced hot dog and mushrooms, sauteed, then cheese on that (this was surprisingly good)
• baked butternut squash, simply seasoned with butter and salt
• winter veggie slaw, of red cabbage, green cabbage and julienned carrots

Wednesday

• ham slices from the freezer
• leftover baked potatoes
• leftover butternut squash mixed with leftover pumpkin puree
• marinated lentil salad, in mustard vinaigrette
• watermelon pickles
• blackberry-rhubarb sauce from the freezer

Thursday

• eggs, scrambled in ham fat, with mushrooms, onions and green pepper, topped with cheese
• turkey bacon
• stewed prunes
• bagels with cream cheese

Another quick and easy week of dinners. I attempted to put some order back into the pantry this week. We still have such abundance of everything that it's impossible to find anything in the pantry or the freezer. But I'm working at it. My plan is to have made a significant dent in the freezers by the end of February. I think we need to eat more ham and blackberries to make that happen.

What was on your menu this past week? Anything particularly yummy, or easy? I hope that everyone who was under the weather last week, is feeling much better, this week. Enjoy your weekend, everyone!