Cooking

Cooking for one has challenges and benefits. The challenge is that I only know how to cook for 4-6 people, most recipes are for 4-6 people, and most ingredients come in large packages. The benefit is that I don't have to cook very often. I'm okay with leftovers and freezing meal-sized portions for later.

This is my busy time, so I have been cooking only on Wednesdays and Fridays, the two days that I'm home to cook. I realized, though, that my freezer is getting full, so now I'm only cooking on Wednesdays and eating leftovers from the freezer for part of the week.

I've been trying some different recipes. I have a subscription to a produce delivery service which means that I get a variety of fruits and vegetables each week. Today the box contained 3 baby bok choy, 4 apples, 2 pears, 2 bell peppers, 2 English cucumbers, a small container of tomatoes, 4 mandarins, a pomegranate, a head of lettuce, and an acorn squash. This is the box for one person and it's plenty for me. I still have onions, potatoes, sweet potatoes, and a bit of celery from previous weeks!

The squash has been coming regularly lately. I don't generally like the texture of squash. Zucchini and spaghetti squash are fine; all others feel wrong. Lately I've been trying, though, to like the squash, with mixed results.

One week the squash was zucchini, and I made zucchini marinara and it was so very good.

There were two weeks of kabocha squash, which was new to me. I tried stuffed squash one week and it was okay. Then I tried maple roasted squash and nope. It still has that squash texture. I ate it because it was all nutritious and stuff, but I probably won't try it again.

Now we're at acorn squash. I roasted one, mashed it up, and made acorn squash muffins. That works for me, although I'm going to try a different recipe. The one I used seems a bit dry and could use some spices to add flavor. I also roasted the squash seeds with a little oil and salt, and they taste quite good.

I have one more acorn squash to figure out. Will I roast it? Bake it? Make it into soup? Make more muffins (although I have some squashed acorn squash in the freezer as well now). I have no idea!

Next week is ham and bok choy stir fry (I also bought a good sized ham at the beginning of October and have a lot of that in the freezer). 

After that....it depends on what the box brings!