Day Forty-three: Cooking for one

I don't know how to cook for one. I may have already said this in an earlier entry but it bears repeating because I still haven't learned. Besides, cooking takes so much time, even when I don't do the cleanup right away. Since I'm not cooking for one, I'm eating for more than one.

For example, I made the basic vegan chocolate cupcakes again. I left out a portion of the oil and added instant coffee in a heaping teaspoon, about the coffee recommended for one cup. The cupcakes were quite good. So good in fact that I snacked all afternoon on three of them. Only on the first one did I have the soy yogurt and raspberries accompaniment I picked up for them. The coffee really does enhance the chocolate flavor. It also helps keep me awake.

But the real point is that except for truly large portions designed for multiple meals, I tend to fix one dish meals, not that they all are a dietary variety in one dish. My lunch was the rest of the Mango Black Bean salad. My dinner is one butternut squash, cooked with green onions, raisins, and fresh ground black pepper. I would have added some orange juice, if I had had any but it was fairly good.

With my turning to steel cut (Irish) oats for breakfast, I let my normal oat supply drop below some recipes' requirements. So, when I went out for my instant coffee, I got some Old Fashion Oats as well. Now I can make the Spicy Mole Oatmeal Chili.

Cooking for one, eating for two (or more) is really the Life after Layoff. Eating more means I need to exercise more, which after a two day break, I did again this morning.

It hit me yesterday, but I didn't say anything about it when I wrote about yesterday. Yesterday was the end of six weeks of not working. It has passed very quickly and I don't have nearly as much done for all that time as I would have liked. I keep telling myself that I'll get better. In fact, I am looking forward to September for a couple of reasons: The big one is my son's wedding and seeing everyone who is coming out for it. Next in line to that is starting to work on my longer term making money to continue the better Life after Layoff.