Insta-food for singles

For a long while I have lamented the fact that frozen and canned food, for the most part, does not come in single-serving sizes. If you buy a frozen bag of broccoli, for example, you better find a way to use all that broccoli in about two weeks, before it starts to get freezer burned and just a little bit stale tasting. Chances are, you may forget about it for a month or more, open it up, look at all the ice crystals, and toss it (unless soup is the intended use).

I often work overtime. I'm supposed to get off at 6:00 pm, and that seldom happens. If I finally shut the computer at 7:30, and the cats also need care, and my  house needs cleaning, chances are good I'm not into cooking for a half-hour and washing dishes after. That's when I tend to rummage around for something I can open up, warm up, and eat. Three-quarters of the time, I end up eating half of it, and throwing out food that won't taste so great as a leftover.

It has always peeved me that I could not find spaghetti sauce in small jars or cans. There is nothing more depressing when you've spent half your life using a whole jar to serve two people, to now pour half into your saucepan and put the other half in refrigerator. "Hi!" it says. "By the way, you loser, that guy you thought loved you, well, he's not here any more! He would have been eating this!" 

Food should keep it's mouth shut.

Historically, single-serve food has come wrapped in so much trash, eating it is depressing. Here is your little frozen dinner, and over there is all the crap you are throwing out that it came in. I don't need plastic and paper containers to cook out of and eat out of.  I own pots and plates, thank you.

Happiness, however, has recently crept in. A few months ago, Lean Cuisine came out with single-serve steamable bags with dinners that are, quite frankly, very good. No plastic bowl. No gobs of unidentifiable half melted "stuff."  Well, maybe a little "sauce"--but far less. And less than $3 a dinner. BirdsEye and other brands have done the same. Even the more unhealthful versions (cheese sauce, etc.) at least have vegetables, which is more than you are going to get out of boxed macaroni and cheese or one of those dried rice packages with the bits they call vegetables.

Then last week I discovered that BirdsEye came out with single-serve steamable veggies. Corn, brussels sprouts and the like.  Now I no longer have to open up a whole bag when I only want one dinner. When I warm up canned soup, I can throw in a serving of corn and get yet another serving of veggies in that day. When I make something veggie-less (pasta and sauce), I can cut up a serving of sprouts and roast them in the oven or toss them in the wok if the fresh produce in the refrigerator turns out to be less-than-fresh. No one says you have the steam the things. You can treat them just like regular frozen vegetables. In fact, with the brussels sprouts, I would recommend it.

Hunts, happily, has small cans of tomato sauce! Perhaps they always have, and the stores where I shop have not carried them until now.  Last night I made spaghetti for myself, rinsed out the empty little can to recycle, and banished the damned talking Prego jar forever.

Then there is the insta-comfort food. Pillsbury makes frozen biscuits. Yeah, yeah, I know you purists out there are rolling your eyes and saying "do you know how easy it is to make biscuits?" Yup! And do you know how depressing it is to make a batch, eat three, and then realize two days later you forgot them and now they are not-so-great tasting? If I decide at 10:00 pm that a biscuit and honey would taste quite nice right then, I can put two frozen biscuits in the oven for 25 minutes and they come out tasting better than anything I could ever make. I was sure they would be flat hockey pucks when I purchased by first bag. No one was more surprised than I when they actually tasted like...biscuits.

Checking ingredients on the bags--most of the "dinners" have additives. Some, most notably the plain vegetables, do not. I'm not sure I'd want to live just on this stuff every day, but it's a step up from what I was eating for "busy food."

Also, life can get pretty meaningless if you never really cook fresh food. Cooking is definitely part of the dinner process. Yes, I'm glad that when I'm busy, I'm not now eating some hideous dried thing out of a box that turns back into food with boiling water and a huge hunk of butter (scary!). But I still find that food tastes better when I've chopped up the kale, and sauted it myself.


I'm not sure if I'm just being more observant, or marketers are getting wiser. There are a lot of single folks out there, and things are too expensive to waste. Less packaging, and decent food without too much crap in it.


Nonetheless, I can't wait until spring, when I can just go out back to pick some dinner fixings. No bags involved.