So, kids are gone, ex and I are no longer together (hence ex i guess lol) and I still find I over cook, I try to use less but it seems if I cook much more than a box of macaroni its too much. Sure I save leftovers, but one can only eat so much leftovers.
How have you dealt with over cooking? Or maybe I’m the only one?
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Freeze leftovers. If food is too much, put 1-2 meals in a freezer-ready container, put it away. Eat it a few weeks/months later when you’re too lazy to cook.
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Measure ingredient amounts. Usually, I don’t bother, but if I don’t want leftovers, it’s necessary.
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Find an elderly friend nearby you can share with?
I’m not an empty nester but due to food allergies my wife and I eat different things. I find a good kitchen scale to be a hard requirement. Just take your recipe and scale it down. For pasta, I weigh the entire box, divide by four, weigh out and cook that fourth.
I had a pasta box that once said “get a handful of noodles. If it’s this big, that’s X many people” with a bunch of circles on the back of the box. and I just memorized how it felt in my hand.
Some dishes freeze well, so those leftovers can be turned into future meal prep. I liked freezing my chili in silicone muffin tins, then one or two thawed chili pucks was a perfect last-minute meal when I didn’t feel like cooking.
I don’t really consider food I cook to be leftovers. It’s just prepping ahead. That means I don’t have to cook tomorrow.
Either plan to cook ahead or learn how much you want in a single portion and measure your ingredients.
