Solo dining during COVID has advantages
Table for one.
If that image seems bleak as the social isolation of these pandemic times continues, think again. Single-person households, long before coronavirus held us captive, reveled in the comforts, challenges and pleasures of dining solo.
For every person who dines alone only because of a move or mate’s departure, there is another who relishes the independence and advantages that a one-person kitchen affords.
Eat a bowl of cereal for supper or prepare enough gourmet fare for a week. Gone is the need to compromise, tolerate or live beyond your own preferences, whims, quirks and budget.
Solitude is not the same as loneliness. Cooking can help build a sense of community, if you’d like, or turn into satisfying self-indulgence. Regardless of extremes, the freezer is your friend.
Single-person households climbed to 28% of all in 2019, reports the U.S. Census Bureau, compared with 17% in 1969. Sweden leads the world in solo living (47% of households), followed by Norway (40%).
Risk vs. rut
Trial, error and deliberate strategy sway household menus, regardless of size.
“I get stuck about what to eat sensibly, in my one-person household, even though I am a trained chef,” Julie Jasinski writes in her blog, “The Deliberate Pickle: The Craft and Finesse of Eating Solo,” which she is turning into a book.
“Smart food choices for solo meals begin long before recipes, with knowledgeable food shopping and kitchen stocking.”
Jasinski, the eldest of eight children, was raised in a Milwaukee family that canned fresh produce by the bushel. Now she flies solo in Madison and is catering manager at University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Wisconsin Union.
An 8-ounce package of fresh spinach need not seem wasteful or overwhelming in a house of one, Jasinski contends. Layer a sandwich with spinach. Toss a few leaves into a skillet with eggs. Add spinach to hot pasta or fried potatoes, shortly before serving. Make spinach as a salad base for roasted root veggies, or citrus fruits.
“Spinach will almost always be in the crisper drawer of my refrigerator,” Jasinski writes. “It has become one of my essential ingredients that can help me stick to my yearlong resolution of being kind to myself.”
Other blog examples: Cooked quinoa helps transform coleslaw from incidental side dish to nutrition-packed salad (leftovers hold up well). A full rotisserie chicken can produce multiple meals for one: Think chicken salad, tacos, soup, curry.
Defining sustenance
Until the pandemic, Vicky Jones of Madison would share meal prep or mealtime with two downstairs housemates. Now they keep their distance. “We still share the kitchen, but never at the same time.”
She considers cooking a physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual pursuit.
“I like the process of cooking more than I like eating,” Jones says. “I like filling my cart with carrots, celery, onions, potatoes. I like snipping rosemary and basil out of my garden. I like peeling the stuff that needs peeling, coring things that need coring and taking piles of scraps to the compost heap.”
The result: big batches of everything, sometimes prepared as Jones listens to podcasts, music or the company of a friend via FaceTime or speaker phone.
“There is something very freeing about creating a mess everywhere,” she says. “I love filling my house with the aromas of cooking. Onions and garlic sautéing. Oregano and basil rising from a big pot of soup. … Sometimes I bake brownies just because I want my house to smell like brownies. I’ll eat one and freeze the rest or make a gift of them to a neighbor.”
Bread making has turned into a meditative practice: Jones for 15 years has nurtured two jars of sourdough (one rye, one wheat). “It’s an exercise in patience and paying attention.”
Since small packages of products cost more per ounce, she buys larger sizes to save money. One example: “I bought a 40-pound bag of flour and used my vacuum sealer to create five-pound bags.”
Know thyself
Ron Faiola of Milwaukee shares a home with two cats. The author of two books about Wisconsin supper clubs, with a third nearly ready to publish, likes cooking but “I’m not very patient when reading recipes.”
Fresh garlic is a priority when Faiola shops, and he’s learned “I can live without some of the fresh herbs listed” as recipe ingredients. Meal making becomes a balance between good taste, convenience and practical pandemic precautions.
Faiola makes simple soups for lunch, four or five days a week. The process begins with sautéing chopped celery, carrots and garlic in butter and olive oil. Then he adds a bouillon cube dissolved in 10 to 12 ounces of hot water, and maybe a can of chicken or some shredded Parmesan.
“Sunday is comfort food night — pasta with homemade tomato sauce,” and he favors rigatoni. His base for “stress-free pizza” (dough mix, canned pizza sauce and mushrooms) provides an easy change of menu. To lessen the need to buy potatoes in large quantities, he stocks scalloped potato mix and instant mashed potatoes.
Frozen, breaded chicken breast fillets make his cut during the pandemic, too, so “I don’t have to worry about the clock ticking on fresh chicken.”
Pandemic pendulum
Mary Mayhew, of Plymouth, is searching online more for recipes that contain ingredients on hand, to reduce trips to the grocery store. “I seldom enter the store” because of the pandemic, and a quick pickup of online orders “saves time and avoids impulse buying.”
It also nudges Mayhew to do more menu planning.
“I have become a real fan of shopping at the local mini mart — there are less people and you don’t have to go through the whole store to get to dairy and produce, which are usually the products I need,” she says.
Faiola stopped buying ground beef and steak because he is not shopping often. “I’ve tried freezing them, but I just don’t like the taste of thawed meat,” he says. “I splurge on really good quality frozen shrimp — big ones” with no trisodium phosphate added.
“Since I’m not spending money on dining out, a shrimp dinner at home is worth every penny,” says the former vegetarian. Faiola predicts he’ll continue to not cook beef when the pandemic ends; “I’ll save that for when I go out.”
For Karen Lee Weidig of Madison, the pandemic “has made me change from shopping every time I feel like it to once, carefully considered, per week.” She is buying and eating more fruit and weaving it into meal planning, to avoid waste.
“I’ve started making a sweet quick bread with fruit that has sat long enough and not ripened nicely, or has sat too long and become unappealing,” Weidig says. She begins with a standard banana bread recipe but uses whole wheat flour and “a little scoop of rolled oats,” then manipulates the amount of sugar “as dictated by the individual fruit.”
For cranberry season, she uses a food processor to make a relish of fresh, sugared and mashed berries. The mix is eaten with yogurt or as a bread spread and is “a minimal commitment” for one fine fruit fix.
Weidig, whose background includes restaurant and catering work, bakes bread “every 10 days or so,” cutting each loaf into fourths and freezing each chunk in a plastic storage bag. She makes her own Greek-style yogurt, too, “an economic decision which I do not regret. Minimum fuss and bother for really, really delicious results.”
Jones typically cooks every weekend.
“I have a few dishes that are always better the next day — soup, chili, ratatouille, lasagna — and I cook those up, sort them into single-serving containers and stick them in the freezer,” she says. “I don’t get worried about eating the same thing every day. Leftovers are just the base for (matching) different breads and cheeses.”
Go-to recipes
Weidig makes a versatile carrot salad, “kept on hand at all times.” She soaks carrots in water “to refresh them” before finely grating the vegetable and adding lemon juice and a handful of raisins.
The refrigerated mixture is a favorite snack, all on its own, but it also livens up a stir fry, curry, California rolls and quick breads.
“I am very poor at following specific, detailed instructions and tend to say, ‘Oh, I don’t have any of that and am not going out for it. Let’s just substitute,’ so the adventure stays alive,” Weidig says.
Mayhew makes a microwaved meatloaf, mixing ground pork and beef, one slightly beaten egg, onion, salt and pepper. She forms the combo into a horseshoe shape, “so it cooks evenly and quickly,” and tops it with barbecue sauce or ketchup “and occasionally bacon.”
Cooking usually begins in the microwave, for eight minutes, then moves to a convection oven for another 10. “It’s an adaptation of the recipe my mother used to make,” Mayhew says, and can be altered to include “whatever I have on hand.”
She uses the same appliance combo when baking potatoes: They go into the microwave for partial cooking and are finished off in the convection oven, “so they get fluffier inside.”
Jones challenges herself to try two new recipes monthly. She bought a freezer in 2020, to accommodate her own bountiful garden and seasonal CSA (community supported agriculture) fare.
“I’m not a very adventurous or creative cook,” Jones says. “If I try something new, it’s usually because I have something I need to use up.”
Know your limits and keep it simple, advises Faiola.
“I just know not to make things that I know are too difficult, like baking bread or trying fancy dishes with lots of prep and ingredients,” he says. “I also have a small kitchen, so space is limited — no room for fancy gadgets.”
Follow longtime travel and food writer Mary Bergin of Madison at roadstraveled.com.
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More morsels
“Cook food that makes you feel happy. Omelets are a good choice for supper. Cheese goes on everything.”
— Ron Faiola
“Don’t be afraid to try something new. Change up spices until you find a combo you like.”
— Mary Mayhew
“I am saving nothing ‘for good.’ The good china and nice linen are in daily use, and I’m allowed to have whatever I want to eat.”
— Karen Lee Weidig
“I have a zucchini bread recipe that I have fine-tuned to perfection. Now I’m the neighborhood lady who hands out amazing zucchini bread. I’ve met more neighbors this year than I have in the entire 30 years I’ve lived in this house. I know everybody’s kids’ and pets’ names now. It took COVID for this to happen. This is a tradition I intend to keep up.”
— Vicky Jones
“There are few items tastier and friendlier to solo eating than a well-made grilled cheese sandwich … but we’re grownups now and can use better breads and more flavorful cheeses.”
— Julie Jasinski
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Five quick hits
- “Researchers have found many affluent, single-person households in urban areas tend to spend more per person than larger ones,” reports the Wall Street Journal. “They are often willing to spend more for a unit of something — twice as much, say, for chopped romaine as a whole head.”
- The Betty Crocker line of Mug Treats is single-serving desserts, prepared in a mug and with a microwave. Researchers say singles prefer smaller portions over a standard cake or brownie mix that makes more, even though per-serving cost is noticeably higher.
- It is human instinct to avoid loneliness, and that longing produces a neurological response similar to a hungry person who craves food. The academic journal Nature Neuroscience published this research conclusion in November.
- “Our preoccupation with loneliness has too often left us oblivious to an important truth: For those who love their own space, solo living can be profoundly fulfilling,” social psychologist Bella DePaulo writes in Psychology Today.
- Want to enhance life while living solo? The Living Well Alone Project, a mother-daughter effort that began in 2017, explores the joys and tackles the challenges at livingwellalone.com. At wearesololiving.com is a Scotland-based effort with similar goals.
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RECIPE
Ron Faiola’s father was born and raised in Pennsylvania Dutch Country, the source of this recipe that the son adapted and makes (in a larger quantity) for the family’s holiday dinners. “It’s simple, tasty and if there are leftovers, it makes a great breakfast,” says Faiola, who made the dish for just himself while quarantining on Thanksgiving.
“I used bacon grease to fry the onions, which gave it such a delicious, savory flavor,” he said, of his most recent pie. “I might not go back to using butter.”
Faiola prefers using sweet onions and recommends using a Pyrex or Le Creuset baking dish. We used sharp cheddar, but Faiola says mild cheddar also is fine.
Onion Pie
Recipe tested by Mary Bergin
(Serves 4)
- 2 medium onions (or 1 large)
- 4-5 tablespoons butter, divided
- ½ cup Italian breadcrumbs
- 2 eggs
- ¾ cup milk
- 1 cup shredded cheddar
- Salt and pepper, to taste
Heat oven to 350 degrees.
Slice onions into rings and sauté in 2 or 3 tablespoons butter over low to medium heat, until soft and translucent but not brown, 5 to 7 minutes.
Lightly butter a 2-quart casserole or 9-inch pie dish.
Melt remaining 2 tablespoons butter and mix with breadcrumbs. Press mixture into bottom of buttered dish. Top with sauteed onions.
Beat eggs. Add milk and cheese. Combine. Pour mixture over onions. Bake uncovered for 25 to 35 minutes, until set. Serve hot, warm, at room temperature or cold.
