This is probably a good time to mention that I’ve also recently gotten into the habit of keeping balls of cookie dough in a resealable plastic bag in the freezer so I can bake them off in my toaster oven one at a time. It’s a tiny luxury and I love it so much.

3. Prep More to Cook Less

I do most of my “cooking” for the week on Sundays right after I get home from the store, but I’m rarely ever turning on the stove or oven because what I’m actually doing is prepping. I wash the grit off the spinach leaves, pick the herbs, scrub the carrots, break down the broccoli into manageable florets that are ready to steam or sauté at a moment’s notice. This is unglamorous behind-the-scenes work. But, week after week, I do it without fail so that when I open the fridge to actually cook, it’s as if small elves have come in the middle of the night to prep my mise en place. The time spent cooking any meal is easily cut in half, if not more, when I’m starting with peeled garlic cloves, scraped ginger, and sliced squash—which means I’m much more likely to want to do it all over again tomorrow, and the day after that.

4. Invest in Solo-Sized Cookware

I own skillets, pots, and pans in all sizes, but the ones I use almost every day are sized just for me: my 1.5-quart stainless steel lidded saucepan, personal-sized donabe, small 6-inch stainless steel and nonstick skillets, and 8-inch cast iron. Between these five pieces of cookware, I can do it all, just for me: small batches of soup or dal, tiny frittatas, a single perfect piece of fish. Plus, it’s so much less labor-intensive to wash smaller pots and pans (imagine shampooing a buzz cut vs. a long mane!).

If you’re an appliance fiend, you might also want to consider smaller-sized versions of traditional appliances, such as a mini food processor and a smaller blender (I love the Vitamix Explorian).

5. You Get ONE Herb

I get the allure of those lush bunches of dill, parsley, and mint sitting pretty under the produce misters at the store. But guess what? Your green sauce, grain salads, and herbed chickpeas will be perfectly delicious with one herb, not four, and you’ll be much less likely to throw out slimy cilantro at the end of the week (no one can eat four bunches of herbs in a week by themselves, except maybe Andy Baraghani). These days, I try to limit myself to one herb (usually parsley or cilantro) and one bunch of scallions per week.

6. Banish the Concept of “Leftovers”

I love the way Julia Child’s book editor Judith Jones describes cooking meal after meal for herself in The Pleasures of Cooking for One: “The secret of making cooking for one fun and creative is not to think of a meal as self-contained, but to understand that home cooking is an ongoing process, one dish leading to another.” It’s the difference between eating “leftovers”—a.k.a. last night’s dinner heated up for today’s lunch—and using the DNA from your last meal to make it something new and exciting, like building five different outfits around a favorite pair of jeans. A meal of roast chicken and greens may not yield many leftovers for a family of four, but for just you, tonight’s dinner might lead to a quick ’n’ dirty mayo-y, celery-studded chicken salad for lunch tomorrow and a carcass for stock. Freeze it for a day in the future when you get a sudden craving for chicken noodle soup. When that day comes, you’ll be so pleased with Past You for giving Future You such a lovely gift.

Alone together,

Christina Chaey
Associate editor