I am trying to find healthy recipes, but most of them are for 4-6 people. When my husband and I make these big dishes, we end up eating well over one serving.
I'd like to find more recipes designed for two people, so that we don't make too much food. I'd like to try out a few online, but I'm also willing to invest in cookbooks.
Eating Well magazine recently published a cookbook called Serves Two that you might be interested in. Their recipes are always good, and are definitely good for you.
I have a BIG problem with leftovers as well. In the old days the leftovers weren't left for very long. I needed to start cooking just the right amount of food to ensure that I wouldn't overeat. What I do now is buy lots of chicken cutlet breasts at a time. I clean them all and wrap them individually and then freeze them. I have 3 teenagers who have very busy schedueles and are not always home for dinner. So it varies greatly how many I will be cooking for on any particular night. The individually wrapped cutlets defrost very quickly, so I just take out 1 per person, depending on how many I'm feeding that night. I use them at least 3 - 4 times a week. I make lots and lots of stir frys using tons of veggies, again just how much depending on who's home. This has worked out very, very well for me. There's always enough food to eat with no leftovers.
I generally cook big meals 2-3 times per week and eat leftovers throughout the week so that I don't have to cook every day. It makes dinner and lunches really easy.
Cooking too much is certainly a problem around here. We cook for others sometimes and end up having too much, you name it. So we're trying to just add more veggies into our life, get alot of veggie trays and drink low sodium veggie juice before meals. It'll be interesting to see if it has an impact on weight. Just started this today. Also like a few others I'll be looking for recipes for two.
www.recipezaar.com has a feature where you can search by number of servings calories, meal type and main ingedient. it's located under the filter results tab. It also has nutrutional info for each recipe.
I frequently get out my calculator and reduce a recipe to one or two servings. Sometimes this works better than others, but for things that don't freeze well, it's worth a try. Otherwise, I freeze leftovers in individual servings.
I plan my leftovers for lunch the next day, for a couple reasons. One, it eliminates a separate step of planning/preparing/packing a lunch...as long as I cooked the night before, I have a healthy meal for lunch all ready to go. It keeps grocery bills down, since I don't have to buy separate lunches...it also means I have a tasty, hot meal for lunch every day and am never tempted to go out and get something.
I cook all meals in 4 portions. Then I plate the food...one serving on each of two dinner plates, one serving in each of two tupperware containers. The tupperware goes into the fridge for lunch, the dinner gets served, and everyone gets exactly a portion.
I recently had WLS and cook for just my Dh and I. What a pain. We hate leftovers. And when there are leftovers, you hate to throw them out because of expense. Here are some of the cooking for one or two cookbooks that I have:
Healthy Cooking for Two, Brenda and Angela Shriver
Healthy Cooking for Two, Frances Price
Not Your Mother's Slow Cooker Recipes for Two, Beth Hensperger
South Living Cookbook for Two, Audrey P. Stehle
Taste of Home Down Home Cooking for Two and Cooking for One orTwo
There a quite a few Better Homes and Gardens cooking for two and the same with Betty Crocker.
There are a couple of websites that I visit regularly. One is the Taste of Homes cooking for two magazine and the other is at recipelink that has a place with recipes for cooking for one or two. There is a chart in the Taste of Home Cooking for 2 magazine that helps you reduce your recipes.
Healthy Recipes for Two: Websites or Cookbooks
