What We Eat When We Eat Alone - Deborah Madison [53]
“I shop a lot,” muses Nick’s former wife, our friend and neighbor, “but I really don’t cook a lot.” Chase also knows a lot about cooking, having been professionally involved with food for many years. She always has a cold bottle of Tattinger in her fridge and is quick to offer a glass.
“Basically I end up making soups and stew with whatever I have,” she says, “and I always have potatoes, onions, garlic, celery, and carrots on hand, so I can do that. Sometimes I plan ahead for certain vegetables, like parsnips or butternut squash, but no matter what, everything goes into one dish.”
A universal stew. In fact, we call it Chase’s Universal.
Along with the vegetables, Chase usually has ground beef on hand, and that goes in her stew, too. “If I add green pepper, that turns it into chili. Add oregano and it’s suddenly a filling for tacos.” She continues enumerating the little additions that push her dish in one direction or another. One time we had her stew in the form of pasta sauce, sort of a rough Bolognese, in fact. It was hearty and good. She served it with a crunchy salad of celery and olives, which she learned from an Italian friend. “But,” she confesses, “I don’t make that for myself alone.” Instead she sticks with her one-pot meal and is happy with that.
One woman not in possession of such a simple approach to her dine-alone menu as Chase’s Universal, described a three-tiered way of eating that reflects the obvious, that we’re just not the same from day to day. “I always eat alone because I live alone,” Lynn says, “but every night is different, depending on the day’s events. The best, most desirable dinners start with an early arrival home and groceries in the fridge already. Or, time to shop. I grill a chop, make a salad, cook a favorite vegetable, or bake a potato. I’m in front of the TV in time for The Closer. In summer I watch the world outside my window. Sometimes when I’m hungry for both food and the act of cooking, I’ll make something like short ribs, knowing that I’ll eat very late. Those leftovers make a meal I can look forward to during the week.”
For the second tier: “When I’m tired and sad, I make a fried egg sandwich with Pepperidge Farm’s very thin white bread and watch reruns of Law and Order.”
And the third tier: “I eat a pint of chocolate ice cream and watch whatever’s on.”
I once stood in Whole Foods on a Saturday night and watched an obviously single woman order the inevitable skinless, boneless chicken breast from the butcher. It felt so sad that I immediately wanted to invite her home to eat with us instead, but of course I had no idea who she was and vice versa. Had I known her, I would have at least told her about Laura’s blue cheese sauce, but that would undo the so-called virtuous bit about the breast being skinless. Curiously, despite the hundreds of times boneless, skinless chicken breasts are glowingly described in women’s magazines as the answer to the single girl’s meal and weight-loss plan, not one woman we spoke with brought up this dispirited food as a culinary possibility.
Another better version, and one you can eat off of for a few meals, is the roasted bone-in chicken breast, with the skin attached. You can roast it as you would a whole bird, though in less time, then you can have half of it for dinner and carve the second half into slices for sandwiches or a salad. Being on the bone and with the skin, it has much more flavor.
And a whole roast chicken, another favorite for the constant solo diner, takes one even further. If you cook your own, you have the advantage of filling your house with good smells while it’s in the oven. Peggy Markel, a good cook who mostly lives in Italy except for twice-yearly visits to her home in Colorado, says that when she’s home she likes to roast a chicken, “because then I can eat it in different ways. I like it hot and moist, just when it comes out of the oven. I always eat a few bits while standing up. Then I put it on a plate with whatever else I