"I get quite lazy about cooking because when I come back from work it is the last thing I want to do" Prince William

As I was saying in my previous message, I love cooking when it's for my family or friends. Because I like having comments about what I made, I like it when my favourite people enjoy my dishes. I have been living alone for the first time of my life since last September and I realized that I took no pleasure to cook only for me. I have quick meals for noon and when the evening comes, I really do not feel like cooking since no one but me is going to enjoy it. I do not know whether you agree or think it is stupid, but it is exactly how I feel.

I made reasearch and found a cookbook entitled The Pleasures of Cooking for One by Judith Jones. The author wrote this book after her husband passed away. Here is an extract from an interview she gave to the Wall Street Journal in 2009:

The Wall Street Journal: After your husband, Evan Jones, passed away, what was it like adjusting to cooking and eating by yourself?

 

Ms. Jones: We both cooked together all our lives. He wrote several books on food and we collaborated on a number. So it was the part of the rhythm of our lives. [I thought] I would not find pleasure in cooking alone and sitting down alone.  And it was interesting to me, because it was quite the opposite. I found it a very nice moment to remember, to feel the past and the present, and to play with food, because it was only me. 

WSJ: What made you want to cook again?

 

Ms. Jones: It was preserving a good memory and thinking how much [my husband] would enjoy this garlicky sausage I just made. But I have known people who have been divorced or widowed, and they can't sit down at the table. They just stand from the refrigerator and eat. It wouldn't be as pleasurable to me if I didn't really love to cook. 

WSJ: Who is this book intended for?

 

Ms. Jones: It's for people who have the cooking genes. It's not for people who want the quick and easy. I wanted to reach people who live alone, that's 51% of the population [in New York City]. I want them to stop wasting their money on bad food.

WSJ: A lot of what you talk about in your book is relationship to food. What's your relationship with food?

 

Ms. Jones: I love food. I think some people have the genes and others don't. They just want to fill their gut and get it over with it. I am one of those people that starts thinking, "What am I having for dinner tonight? How am I going to play with it?" To me it's a creative thing. I think when we are sitting at desks all day in horrid little penitentiaries, it's freeing.

I am particularly interested in what she says about people eating bad food because it is something I noticed since I began to cook my own meals every single day. As I'm alone, I don't feel like cooking ; as I don't feel like cooking, I want to eat something quick and good ; but at the end of the meal, I almost always realize that I did not really enjoy it. I am coming back to the university after Easter break and decided to try to act as Judith Jones says: take more time to cook for myself in order to eat healthier food that I will far more enjoy. I seriously think about buying her book, this could help...

However, I noticed something really annoying when you are living alone and cooking for one, it is the way most of the fresh products I buy go off before I can even think about cooking them. This problem is highlighted by Joe Yonan, the author of Serve Yourself: nightly adventures in cooking for one, on his blog where he says "even if you manage to buy in smaller quantities, you have to shop every day or two to keep on top of fresh produce before it goes to waste".

 

The solution suggested by Tamar Adler, himself being the author of An Everlasting Meal: Cooking with Economy and Grace, is to cook all the ingredients as soon as they are bought and store them to be used later. I did not test this suggestion yet but I am personally not sure that food keeps a good taste when it is cooked and kept a long time in a fridge. On the National Health Service website, it is even written that cooked aliments should not be kept more than two days in a fridge. I am not sure that what Tamar Adler proposes is the perfect solution to the problem.