by Ian Pauley

Created on: February 12, 2008

When faced with cooking for yourself either for the very first time of for the first time in a while the prospect is daunting and the temptation to rely on a diet composed of junk food or supermarket microwave products (ding ding meals) is not the way forward. You can cook well for yourself and you should.

If you've just fallen out of a long term relationship then you probably won't want to cook but, for the sake of your health and self esteem, you must.

First of all make sure you have the basics for making good meals for yourself. Make sure you have at least one good cook's knife, a chopping board, a frying pan and a couple of saucers. With those few tools you can prepare a meal fit for a king! The next thing to make sure you have the following ingredients to hand: salt and pepper, a selection of dried herbs (fresh would be better, grow them in pots on a window ledge), some vegetable stock cubes (or powder), a tub of dried mushrooms, some dried chillies (or chilli sauce), self-raising flour (can be used instead of plain in most cases), butter, olive oil and groundnut oil, a small amount of sugar or honey, a selection of dried beans and lentils and lastly a white wine vinegar. It may sound like a lot but it isn't; I could easily double the list. Anyway that should ensure that you can do just about anything at the drop of a hat.

Secondly, don't be frightened of buying fresh meat, fish or cooking small quantities, especially if you have a fridge and a freezer. If you have a freezer then make sure you have a packet of plastic food bags so that whatever you don't eat you can then portion out and freeze for another day. Even if you don't have a fridge, a meal kept in a saucepan with a well fitting lid will last for a couple of days at temperatures of under 20 Celsius/68 Fahrenheit, although I would not advocate going longer than that without first making sure that the food has been brought to the boil for a couple of minutes. Last thing you need to do is give yourself a bout of food poisoning.

Thirdly treat cooking as an interesting way to spend some time and not a drudge. It may sound daft but if you don't put any enthusiasm or love into a meal then it will taste bland and you will not enjoy it, and you'll start going to the supermarket or takeaway and that will not do.

Lastly I would advocate experimenting. Just pretend you are cooking for say two people. That way if your experiment goes horribly wrong then you won't feel too bad about throwing that amount of food away; and if it the best meal you have ever tasted then you can eat the second half the following evening, or slob out and stuff your face in one sitting! Well why not, who's going to complain about not getting the bigger portion? Just don't get into the habit of eating for two otherwise you'll end up looking like two people!

Bon appetite.

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