I get the impression that a fair amount of FT's members are single so I bring this up.

I don't eat breakfast on weekdays.

For lunch, I make a large salad that lasts a week (ingredients and greens kept separate - usually with grilled chicken) and a sandwich.

My normal dinner is a piece of meat (fish, chicken, pork, or beef), a side (usually brown rice or baked potato), and a biscuit (I make these cheddar biscuits with Old Bay seasonings).

These meals are certainly filling and somewhat healthy, but for the love of God they are boring.

My question is, what do you (single people) make for yourself? I google "cooking for one" and a multitude of recipes come up, but many (if not all) ask for ingredients that would go bad in 1-2 weeks if not used. You just can't buy a lot of these ingredients in small quantities (unless I am shopping in the wrong places) and I'm not going to piss away food & money for variety (i'm just cheap that way).

Any suggestions?

I'm sure any here will turn their nose up at frozen vegetables but for me they taste fine and they will keep a long time. Buying fresh vegetables for just one person isn't very economical as it goes bad so quickly. I usually use frozen vegetables and then by fresh meat as I need it. Frozen chicken breasts are usually fine for things like pasta though.

Years ago when I was single, I found a book entitled "Fifteen Minute Meals", by Emalee Chapman. I see amazon.com still has some used copies for sale. Every meal had a prep time of 15 minutes or less. This did not include purchasing the ingredients so it required a little advanced planning, but many recipes contained common everyday things the average kitchen might already have.

Many evenings I'd come home tired and hungry, within 30 minutes dinner was ready. I often improvised and came up with all sorts of things once I got the idea.

I still have the book and could use it, but I'm not the primary cook now.

Most fresh fruits and vegetables are bought by the pound, so getting a week's worth or less is not that hard. Exceptions: lettuce is the big one; even when buying a bag I'm pitching a fair amount in the end. Watermelon's the other. If I have to buy mushrooms in bulk, they'll freeze ok. Onions and fresh herbs might be a problem so I just use the dehydrated / powdered.

Other than that the only thing is having to refrigerate the bread and buns.

+1 on the utility of frozen vegetables, especially when you don't go grocery shopping with regularity.

There are a few books I like, as well:
One Pan, Two Plates (you'll have leftovers! And this is apparently Amazon's #1 bestseller in "cooking for one")
Fast Food My Way
More Fast Food My Way

A different slant on some topics .... so I'd say the following!

Frozen vegetables have more vitamins and are generally better for you than fresh vegetables which of course are not fresh .... and make much more sense for a single cook. No waste. Portion control.

Frozen fish is much much better than fresh unless you can buy it off of a fishing boat. You can also split packs of two fish into one. I feel dumb at my life long presumption that fresh is better than frozen. It isn't - the only way you can tell is that frozen tastes fresher. Sea bass is a favourite and frozen haddock in batter for fish and chips. Frozen chips are really good these days. We only ise them and never fry.

I think the most important thing you can have is some freezer space and a supply of small square plastic reusable containers. I'd see this as a game changer. Being able to make a batch of fresh bolognese sauce and split them into single portions means you are always eating superior home cooked food and done in moments. Same for stuff like curries which always improve when reheated. Cooking for one is a great excuse to have a lovely reassuring stock of great home cooked stuff in the freezer in small packs. It is always going to be better than bought and normally much cheaper.

I am not a very skilled cook. I can follow a recipe just fine, but I don't have much inspiration to do much else. I eat a lot of sandwiches and easy veggie dishes like veggie tacos. Pretty boring. I rarely have much food in my house at all. Really need to start dating a chef.

Get yourself a soup cookbook. It's too warm half the year, but in cooler months I make a pot of soup every weekend. Almost everything that goes in the pot could come from the freezer and the leftovers can go back in for another week. Heavy on the vegetables and it's healthy. Heavy on the meat and it's hearty. Change the seasonings around and keep ingredients separate to make changes to the next night's pot. For instance, I can make a chicken noodle soup and using the same ingredients (less the noodles) the next night add some curry powder and diced apples and you have something entirely different. I got used to cooking for a family of 6 and when the kids moved out, there was an adjustment necessary. I'm still cooking for two but Mrs BamaVol eats like a bird so I cook to please myself.

I'm the queen of overbuying produce, but I've found that if I take the time to clean and prep them as soon as I get home, I find ways to use it.

Like BamaVol and the soup recipes, If I have carrots, onions, peppers, kale, and zucchini on hand, I can put them in soup, stir fry, curry, enchiladas, in addition to just serving them on the side roasted, or grilled, or raw.

As for fresh herbs, asian groceries are the best for larger quantities, but the regular grocery will usually have some sort of mixed pkg like "poultry blend" or some such that will have two or three types that I can make work with what I'm cooking. I also grow my most used herbs in the summer.

Cooking for 2 is almost as hard. We embrace the slow cooker as anything braised holds up well to reheating. On a Saturday or Sunday we'll fire up the cooker, yesterday it was chicken pieces with onion/garlic/ginger with some pepper bay leaf and soy sauce along with a bit banana pepper.

We'll have one meal off it tonight with rice, and the rest will go into containers in the freezer - this will become various things - taco filling, sandwich mix, chicken for a noodle casserole, etc.

A couple weeks ago it was a big batch of chili which also became all sorts of things. Another favorite is pork shoulder.

I am lucky enough that I live close enough to work to go home for my lunch break. But that means lunch has to be fast. And in the evenings I often don't have time for complicated cooking.

I have started to so cooking ahead on the weekends. I will usually make a few frozen meatloaves, that gets me a few meals a week and reheats well in the micro. I have also become dangerously dependent upon frying frozen corn in a small pan, sprinkled with a bit of garlic, pepper, and grated parm. I also fry up preboiled potatoes. I usually make an almond or banana bread on the weekend too which serves as breakfast.

Then again, I can be a pretty boring eater.

Thanks for your suggestions everyone. I did order the cookbooks off Amazon, 6P&E and Gfunkdave, so I will see how that goes.

I'll try buying frozen vegetables more and thanks to Missy and Bama, I will certainly try throwing in leftover vegetables/perishables into stews/soups/meatloafs.

I guess my follow-up question would be - what foods (especially vegetables) do you find that do not freeze/refrigerate (over time - 2 weeks) well? Lettuce has been mentioned. I was surprised that mushrooms freeze OK (though I've never tried so what do I know?).

Would be interesting to see how many FT members are actually single. BTW not trying to derail thread.

+1 on frozen vegetables.

Single here. I work from home, so breakfast and lunch are typically made for me alone. Dinners are typically for 1 or 2 depending on whether the boyfriend is around.

I take several approaches...
* Make regular sized portions of recipes and then make 1-3 meals of it while it's still fresh (Day 1 dinner, Day 2 lunch and maybe Day 3 lunch or dinner) while freezing individual portions of the leftovers to eat down the road.

* Make rice 1-2 times a week in my rice cooker, use it throughout the week for one-bowl meals (rice, protein, veggie or two, sauce).

* Once or twice a week, buy an individual portion of fish (salmon, most typically) and roast it in the same pan as veggies. I use the Pike's Place fish seasoning to sprinkle over the fish before roasting, veggies are tossed in olive oil and seasoned with sea salt and an herb or two. Broccoli, brussels sprouts and asparagus are my favorites for roast veggies. Often I'll buy an extra large piece of salmon and then toss the leftover into a salad the next day.

* If I have a large quantity of veggies that need to be eaten, I'll make a frittata (sliced potatoes sauteed in olive oil lining the bottom of a casserole pan, then topped with veggies, feta or Parmesan cheese, maybe some crumbled bacon or other meat, then topped with eggs and baked). I'll eat it cold for breakfast or lunch over the course of several days, or for dinner paired with a salad.

* If I have to buy a larger portion of protein, I'll cook it and then cut into small pieces, then freeze. That allows me to grab a handful of protein, add it to rice and veggies for a quick meal. I do this most frequently with chicken (poached) or pork loin (grilled/roasted)

* Once a week or so, I do a grazing lunch or dinner with cheese and crackers, veggies and dips, salami or other cold cuts or preserved meats.

* I'll do egg dishes for lunch or dinner. Sometimes I make individual egg muffin sandwiches with Canadian bacon (muffins, bacon are in the freezer, so no worries about them going bad). Or I'll do a riff on chilaquilles -- eggs scrambled with salsa, served on top of a tortilla or tortilla chips with slices of avocados.

* If you have tortillas in the house, there are endless varieties of quesadillas you can make. Lately I'm doing a corn-flour tortilla, spread with refried black beans, a few slices of roast beef, a little cheese and a lot of salsa and avocado.

* Salads are, of course, a great way to go through a lot of veggies. Stir fries are also terrific, and you can freeze the leftover veggies to use as a side dish down the road.

* Clearly I'm not much of a sandwich person, but I'll occasionally make a sandwich if I have great ingredients. That said, I go for more elaborate sandwiches. For example, leftover steak might be sliced and warmed in some garlic butter then served on an open-faced sandwich. Or if I've made some caramelized onions I'll buy a nice blue cheese and some roast beef for a sandwich.

I am curious about your "you just can't buy these ingredients in small quantities" comment. Where in Chicago are you shopping? I do most of mine at Whole Foods, Trader Joe's, Jewel, Mariano's and even (I hate to admit) Walmart Express.

I am certainly by not means an angel when it comes to consuming everything before it spoils, but I don't really have a problem with most things. Every protein under the sun can be bought in almost any portion size if you're willing to shop at the butcher counter/seafood counter. Sure, an entire chicken is a fixed price, but many cuts of beef, pork, poultry and fish are available in flexible sizes. Fruits and veggies can be purchased in bulk. (If you're feeling lazy, salad bars are a great way to get just the right amount of many common ingredients.) The deli counter can give you flexible-sized portions of cheese and coldcuts. (Whole Foods near me even has a basket of better cheeses that have been cut into portions costing $4 or less.)

I don't freeze cheese (but I know some who do) or milk (ditto). I have frozen tomatoes if I intend to use them in sauces/stews, but I normally wouldn't refrigerate or freeze them. I do refrigerate avocados and know some who freeze them, but I haven't. Lettuce doesn't freeze, but other steamed/sauteed greens such as kale, spinach and brussels sprouts freeze well.

at least in the US frozen products are going to vary dramatically by brand

fish is usually previously frozen, so i know what you mean

but veggies are not previously frozen are they?