World Food Day

 To celebrate World Food Day (16 October), I want to share some ideas about food and living alone. I enjoy cooking, but this can become tedious when there is no external feedback, and it can be very easy to drift into repetition - Monday cottage pie, Tuesday chicken curry. At its most extreme, people living on their own can slip into complete monotony (my mom, shortly before moving into a care home, was eating the identical breakfast, lunch and dinner almost every day of the week), or one can be over-reliant on "ready meals" with a serious implication on your wallet.

In my first weeks of retirement, I was concerned that I could spiral into lazy cooking habits, with negative impact on my health through lack of food diversity. My solution was to have a regular weekly template, but to introduce novelty each Saturday by choosing out a recipe from one of my many books, and sticking to it exactly. 

A recipe from a book simply called "Vegetables", published by Time Life

This often entailed quite a treasure hunt to track down the correct ingredients, but that was part of the strategy. Each weekend, my fridge and grocery cupboard would fill up with interesting items, which would enliven my weekday cooking. For the recipe in the photo, I needed thick-sliced ham and pine nuts, neither of which I regularly use, which reminded me of other meal ideas that had lain dormant in my own repertoire.

Another advantage was that I would be introduced to different combinations of flavours (orange and spinach in this recipe) especially as my cookery books give quite a range of different countries, each with its unique flavours. It also meant that I would quite often need to buy more of some of the ingredients than was required for the "meal for one". Sometimes I cook more than one portion, and keep the second for a meal later in the week, or freeze the leftovers, but this isn't always feasible, especially if some of the ingredients are kept raw.

One of the fundamentals of my upbringing was that food waste was a crime against humanity (maybe not quite that extreme, but close). Hot-wired into the strategy of forcing myself to cook one new meal each week, completely "by the book", was the appreciation that I would have a surplus of some of the less usual items. This means that I need to be quite strategic in using up the fresh produce, prompting me to look for other recipes in my cookery books or online. 

The advantage of being retired, is that my time is very flexible for faffing in the kitchen, making food that takes quite a bit of preparation, or turning the last of the cabbage into pickle. The other way that I have schooled myself to avoid food waste is to be realistic about how quickly I can work my way through the fresh produce. If I have more than a week's supply for one person, I now divide it up and freeze what I am unlikely to use. This also works with fresh herbs - my freezer has packets from many of my Saturday night adventures to liven up later meals.

Another advantage of sticking closely to a recipe is that one learns new skills and techniques, so the whole process becomes stimulating. I almost always do my Saturday recipe purely for myself, partly so that I am not stressed by the timing, but also because I want to experience the flavours before foisting it on friends or relatives. If I repeat one, I usually simplify it a bit, and swap out the more exotic ingredients, while still retaining the main flavour combinations.

The other thing I am aware of for my special meal night, is the importance of visual appearance on one's taste buds, so I specially select the plate or bowl to complement the meal, and put quite some care into the "plating up".

Stuffed radicchio in a simple Arzburg bowl

I am sure my appetite for healthy food has improved greatly since I have started the Saturday adventures. The modern palate is so swamped by sugars and artificial flavourings that it really takes time and effort to re-educate ones taste to natural foods, herbs and whole spices. Centuries of craft are often reflected in these recipes, a process of refinement that could so easily be lost as we get overwhelmed by fast food and ready meals.