Cooking for one

 

Yesterday my cousin Ruth came for lunch.  Pork, apple sauce, new potatoes, ratatouille, peas, cauliflower cheese, roast parsnips.  She's struggling a bit at the moment as her husband has Alzheimer's disease and has recently moved into a care home.  This is devastating for Ruth, as I am sure you can imagine.  Quite apart from her grief for her husband's condition, she is now struggling with living alone for the first time in her life.  

One of the hardest things for her is learning how to cook for one.  Actually, many of my friends have had the same difficulty.  There is less motivation to cook a proper meal, it's difficult to buy suitable small quantities, a meal is no longer an occasion to be shared with someone special.

So, yesterday we shared Sunday lunch and she said it was the best meal she'd had in ages and we talked about how to improve her own food routines.  She noticed I have a meal plan on the fridge door.  I explained that I have to plan how to use things which are not available in small enough packs.  Sometimes they can be frozen but sometimes I need to plan when to eat them.  

She rather enjoyed the ratatouille which I served, so I talked to her about bulk cooking and freezing.  I mentioned the range of soups lurking in my freezer

She loves cauli cheese so I showed her the bag of frozen cauli coated in cheese sauce from which I had taken a small quantity, plonked it in a dish, covered with grated cheddar and bunged in the oven with the pork.  No way would I prep cauli cheese for one, but this way I can cook just as much as I need.

She was impressed by the home cooked parsnips so I mentioned bulk preparation so they can just tossed in oil and cooked in the oven or air fryer but they can also be bought ready prepped.  I mentioned the huge variety of commercially frozen vegetables which could improve her diet.

And I suggested she use a proper butcher so she can get just as much meat as she needs rather than rely on the supermarket.

We talked everything through over some fresh fruit salad which she agreed is much more interesting than a banana or yoghurt, and proper coffee for which I showed her a small cafetiere although I used a big one. And she has decided she will invite me to go for a meal.

Cooking for one has always been the usual thing for me.  What other tips and wrinkled would you add to my list?

A Bit of Betjeman

 

Diary of a Church Mouse

Here among long-discarded cassocks,

Damp stools, and half-split open hassocks,

Here where the vicar never looks

I nibble through old service books.

Lean and alone I spend my days

Behind this Church of England baize.

I share my dark forgotten room

With two oil-lamps and half a broom.

The cleaner never bothers me,

So here I eat my frugal tea.

My bread is sawdust mixed with straw;

My jam is polish for the floor.

Christmas and Easter may be feasts

For congregations and for priests,

And so may Whitsun. All the same,

They do not fill my meagre frame.

For me the only feast at all

Is Autumn's Harvest Festival,

When I can satisfy my want

With ears of corn around the font.

I climb the eagle's brazen head

To burrow through a loaf of bread.

I scramble up the pulpit stair

And gnaw the marrows hanging there.

It is enjoyable to taste

These items ere they go to waste,

But how annoying when one finds

That other mice with pagan minds

Come into church my food to share

Who have no proper business there.

Two field mice who have no desire

To be baptized, invade the choir.

A large and most unfriendly rat

Comes in to see what we are at.

He says he thinks there is no God

And yet he comes ... it's rather odd.

This year he stole a sheaf of wheat

(It screened our special preacher's seat),

And prosperous mice from fields away

Come in to hear our organ play,

And under cover of its notes

Ate through the altar's sheaf of oats.

A Low Church mouse, who thinks that I

Am too papistical, and High,

Yet somehow doesn't think it wrong

To munch through Harvest Evensong,

While I, who starve the whole year through,

Must share my food with rodents who

Except at this time of the year

Not once inside the church appear.

Within the human world I know

Such goings-on could not be so,

For human beings only do

What their religion tells them to.

They read the Bible every day

And always, night and morning, pray,

And just like me, the good church mouse,

Worship each week in God's own house,

But all the same it's strange to me

How very full the church can be

With people I don't see at all

Except at Harvest Festival.

A whole new experience

 I had a very new experience yesterday.  I was stopped for shoplifting!

I need to say for starters that the "accusation" was entirely understandable.  I can't use a shopping trolley like everyone else so I put things into the front basket of my mobility scooter.  I went into a supermarket yesterday and put a punnet of strawberries and a tin of custard into my basket where there were already four carrots obtained elsewhere.  I went through the self service checkout, scanned the strawberries and custard, and paid for the goods.

As I prepared to leave a shop assistant came, asked to see my receipt and asked why I hadn't paid for the carrots in my basket.  I explained that they were not from that store.  She walked away without a further word and went back to chatting with another assistant.  As I passed I suggested that a smile and a "sorry" would have been appropriate.  All I got was "humph" and a rather angry look.  I think she felt deprived of her prey!

As I say, the original accusation was not unreasonable but I feel the store should train its staff to handle such situations better.

Feeling very fortunate

 

Yesterday the gas engineer came and checked the central heating boiler, the gas hob and the carbon monoxide alarm.  This is an annual visit arranged by my wonderful landlord.

Over the year I have built up a very large credit on my energy account so I know that, no matter how cold the weather is, I will be able to have my heating on or wrap myself in a heated throw.

I haven't yet switched on the heating this year but as soon as I do I will go around each radiator and bleed them as I was taught many years ago.

A great landlord.  An adequate income (and the know-how to budget).  Knowledge acquired over the years.  I will not be cold this winter.

Others will be cold.  I am fortunate that I do not have to choose between heating and eating.