This is tremendous and insightful.
The secret ingredient.
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Cooking For One By Linda Stowe
One of the Facebook groups I belong to is called “Cooking for One.” I joined to get ideas for recipes yielding one or two servings. And there are a fair number of those, mostly borrowed from a woman’s site who created a cookbook of these recipes.
But most of the members who share on Cooking for One talk about the emotional pain that comes with cooking for one after the loss of a spouse. This is especially true now that we are in the holidays and the loneliness feels sharper. This is a time of food memories, and those who have been living on soup and sandwiches feel the urge to cook the meals they remember making in the past.
Some go ahead and make their holiday dishes with plans to freeze leftovers or share with a neighbor. Others gamely try to pare down their recipes to fewer servings. I can’t imagine that either of those approaches is really satisfying because the joy of cooking a big meal comes when we sit down at the table and watch people polish off in an hour everything you’ve spent days preparing. But all that time planning, shopping, standing at the stove, and chopping veggies on the cutting board seem worth it. That’s the real secret ingredient. It’s not oregano or bacon or a splash of wine. It’s the pleasure of sharing what we’ve cooked with those we love. And that’s not an ingredient in a recipe made for one.
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The best ingredient.
Cooking For One By Linda Stowe
