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So far I'm cooking less. That may be because all but one kid is gone and he's working 3-11 right now. We've never really gone out to eat much in any case.
Last edited by North Beach Person; 07-27-2015 at 05:50 PM..
I have never liked to cook and barely learned how until recently, although I am working almost full-time still. I have to have healthy stuff to take to work on my off-shift nights, otherwise health goes to zero really fast. I used to like to go out alone when in the city, but now that I live outside the city, it doesn't seem like such a treat, plus, now that I'm cooking decent food, most places' food isn't such a treat. I expect I'll be doing the same in retirement.
I've always loved to cook so do cook a lot. Since I'm tryingto get super healthy I have to be careful what I buy. I have found that I've thrown things out because I don't have the freezer room anymore so am trying to be more careful when buying things. Example, I made a pasta/vegetable salad last night & today I'm slow-cooking a pot of chickpeas to use up the zucchini & yellow squash so it won't go bad. I still need some things from the store, onions, garlic, etc. but have to be careful that I don't buy too much. I really hate to waste.
It is so different here in a small town. You can't just run out & buy those things, like I used to do in the city.
much less & similar now that we are both retired. In our relationship, the cleanup has always fallen to me...& I am very uninterested in that aspect of dinner.
YES! We have the time now and enjoy cooking. Actually we decided to build a new home with a NICE "gourmet" type kitchen, with more cook friendly appliances and solid counter tops.
You know, I've been looking at houses online while I work. It seems they all come with gorgeous, lavish kitchens now. Nary a tile countertop to be seen, all granite. Oodles of counter space. Lots of cabinets.
I know one thing I want in our new house's kitchen: undercabinet lights. We put them in our rental and they make that dark corner of the house glow.
We probably eat in and eat out equally. My spouse is tired of coming up with meals after all these years and so it is left to me to decide what we are having for dinner and take it out of the freezer. I admit I forget to take something out a lot, so we go out for dinner.
When my husband was alive, we seldom went out to eat because his disabilities made it difficult. So I cooked three meals a day. He always wanted full meals for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. A sandwich wasn't good enough for dinner, but take away the bread and somehow that made it acceptable. Go figure.
Now that he's gone, I do much less cooking. I don't go out to eat now because it's too expensive. Sometimes I just want yogurt for dinner, so that's what I have. Once in a while, I'll spend a day cooking up big dishes -- bake 8 chicken thighs, a lasagna, make a bunch of meatballs -- then freeze everything in individual size servings. Then I'll just pull one of those servings out of the freezer, heat it up, and have it with a salad, and I'm good.
For me the answer is a definite yes. I never married, and spent a lot of the first decade of my post-college life in situations where I moved frequently. The phenomenon of hotel accommodations set up for "light housekeeping", particularly by single and, presumably-male occupants simply wasn't as common back then.
That began to change with the widespread adoption of the microwave oven, which took off in the late Seventies, and the "dorm" refrigerator. I also learned to take the frozen entrees' geared to a smaller, presumably-female customer and "bulking them up" by adding more pasta, or "jazzing them up" with a few mushrooms, olives, or some green pepper (the most underrated vegetable in the world). Frozen vegetables in plastic bags were another big improvement when "cooking for one".
I'm now in what I hope will be a very long and slow transition into full retirement; converted a large house I bought from a relative's estate into rental units for young people in the mobile lifestyle I knew when just starting out. The lessons I learned back then are still being put to good use.
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). Frozen vegetables in plastic bags were another big improvement when "cooking for one".
