Eating Alone

My friend Tina (a real-life friend with a blog, not a blogger who became a real-life friend!) wrote an interesting post last night about a book she’d just read, Alone in the Kitchen With an Eggplant. Apparently a bunch of food writers talk about cooking and eating alone.

As someone who, when she’s home, is eating alone 99% of the time (although Marcia and I have a dinner date at my apartment that we desperately need to reschedule), I found the premise of this book really interesting.

My mom always made a full dinner when I was growing up, so the idea of eating cereal for dinner has never occurred to me. For me, it’s either I make a full dinner for myself or I order out—there’s no in between. Certainly, the fact that I document most of my meals on here means I put a little extra pressure on myself (as silly as that is) to prepare a full, real meal for myself for dinner, but it’s more than okay to have a baked potato or something that’s not a “real meal” for dinner, and, honestly, as a single girl living alone, I should do that more often!

Tonight’s dinner was pretty amazing. I made fried rice! 

Ingredients:

• broccoli
• kale
• carrots
• chicken sausage
• brown rice
• soy sauce
• sesame oil
• scrambled egg
• peas
• onions

I cooked all the veggies in the soy sauce/sesame oil, then put the egg over top and scrambled it (even though I think you’re supposed to do it the other way around), then added the sausage and the brown rice. 

Do you usually eat alone or with others? Do you eat differently when you eat alone?