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What Do We Eat When We Eat Alone?
“It seems to me that eating alone is about something satisfying like all corn and tomatoes, without having to follow the rules the way you do when you have to consider someone else. Though I suppose that if I ate alone all the time, I’d be the opposite, making swell little meals in a committed way.” Fran McCullough, cookbook author
Alone, and with friends, I dine like a Queen: Salted almonds, spaghetti Bolognese, BBQ chicken, Bufalo mozzarella on crusted bread, chicken pot pie, chocolate chip cookies, Carne asada burrito, Vicolo pizza, arugula salad with shaved Reggiano, Straus mint ice cream, good Chinese take-out, banana yogurt smoothie, Texas chili, and on and on. AND YOU?
What We Eat When We Eat Alone by Deborah Madison
Image: Hamburger Helper by Amelia Stier
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11 comments for “What Do We Eat When We Eat Alone?”
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What I eat: salad, soup, Chinese and Thai take out, baked potato and steamed broccoli, beefless beef stew–I’m vegan–pasta with homemade marinara sauce, Tofurkey pizza when I’m too lazy to properly cook (which is often, sad to say.) Gardein chicken with a can of peas…whatever strikes my fancy.
Sounds like you’ve got it covered. I try to make a big pot of stew-like things on Sundays. And keep small portions stowed in my freezer. Also, in my L.A. neighborhood, I can walk to good Chinese food, pizza and a high end grocery store which serves prepared foods. I eat well!
Before I got married, I had things like balsamic vinegar, French dark chocolate, and pine nuts as staples in my pantry. Although in reality, I cooked something big on weekends, froze it in smaller containers, and took it to work for lunch.
But I never had Pringles, Velveeta, and instant soup as I do now that I am married. There is junk in my kitchen that I never wanted.
Are the Pringles, Velveeta and instant soup for you or your husband?
I’m thriving on my diet based on the supernatural health benefits of chocolate and peanut butter and prepare my meals in one cup which I rinse when done and eat five times a day easily standing at the sink, sitting in the car and lying in bed sucked into the black hole of my laptop and have maintained my loss of 49 pounds for almost three years and my friends and family think it’s insane… and I don’t care because I live alone and mostly eat alone and when I go out I can eat anything and go back home and make up for it and they are all fat and I’m not.
Whatever floats your boat. I prefer to eat dinner sitting down, with a martini by my side.
Food is the best luxury of being single. I swing to extremes, in a way. If I want to make an amazing meal, I can afford more expensive items in it. If I have no desire to be in the kitchen, I can eat take-out and prepped or frozen meals more cheaply. If I’m really wallowing, I can say “Tonight, pita chips & hummus or Ben & Jerry’s is dinner” without caring about the calories or the imbalance.
Sounds perfect.
Eating – or not – is a factor in my singlehood. I have had at least two women who could not accept that I did not want to eat the food they had so lovingly prepared for me. I would have been happy to fix my own and sit and talk but they could not accept my one-bowl or -cup diet that keeps me lean and healthy. They wanted to express their love through food and I couldn’t or wouldn’t adapt and we parted. I wonder how many people, like one here, accept food in their lives because of a loved one that they otherwise wouldn’t and thereby attain a body weight that they don’t like.
Eating alone is such a pleasure. I can chow down that tuna burger, greedily slurp up penne bolognese, bury my face in Thai yellow curry. When in the presence of other people I am hesitant to relish, luxuriate in the taste and texture, and am hyper-conscious of how I look/smell/sound. There isn’t much I dislike more than a lunch date. Funny that it feels so different from my place in this world.
You MUST be happy!
I love eating peanut butter out of the jar