One IS the Lonliest Number

It has been well-documented over the years how difficult, and ultimately wasteful, shopping and cooking for one can be. Well, as someone who has lived alone for a very long time, I can say that a lot of those problems can now be relatively easily solved, but there is another, more insidious problem on the rise.

First, the good news. Most grocery stores now include a butcher, bakery and deli within the actual confines of the store. The result of this is that it's no longer ever necessary to purchase the prepackaged quantities and sizes of the most expensive, and perishable products. Appropriate amounts of breads, cheeses, cold cuts and products like olives and mushrooms can easily be acquired. Meat can be cut into individual serving sizes and frozen. While there are still products in cans and jars that are not available in single-serving sizes, many of these items are less perishable and can be kept in the refrigerator long enough to get a second, or even a third use out of them.

The larger problem is when you want to make a dish that comes in a package or a pouch. The ingredients tend to be measured and the instructions written for four servings. Typically 1 pound of protein, for example. If I want to make that dish for one, using a ¼ pound of, say, chicken or pork, I've got way too much of everything else. In the case of a pouch based stir-fry sauce I like, I just go ahead and make the whole thing so the ratios stay correct, but I end up only using about a third of it and throwing the rest away. At $1.89, not the end of the world, but a possible source of error, and a wasteful one at that.

Another example is a Pad Thai "kit" I like. It's just noodles and a pre-made Pad Thai sauce that's quite good. The noodles don't represent a major problem, I just use about half of them and seal the other half in a zip top bag for a little home made Ramen later. But the sauce. There's no real sense of how much to use, and both too much and too little result in disappointment. It would be nice if the manufacturers of these types of foodstuffs included instructions for a half - batch.

I know, none of this is a major crisis, but a little recognition that not everyone is a family of four, along with more choice in package size would be beneficial to all...