I lived alone for about 15 years before I met my husband. As others have said, your freezer is your best friend, both because it saves you from throwing a lot of food out, but also because all the food you froze when you did cook will be there for when you can't be bothered or aren't in the mood. On a day you're in the mood to cook, whip up a batch of spaghetti sauce, thick with meat & mushrooms and freeze it in zip lock bags of one or two servings. Go ahead and buy the value pack of steaks, saving money, and take the time to wrap them carefully against freezer burn before you freeze them for later. Another friend, along with the freezer, is soup. Soup is your very good friend. Keep a good supply of canned or frozen chicken and beef stock on hand, and an amazing number of your leftovers can be turned into the next night's meal without eating leftovers every time you turn around. Use your imagination. That bit of leftover steak? Saute some onions and garlic, add some beef stock, the steak (diced) and the container of leftover veggies from the day before, and maybe some chopped cabbage or frozen peas...whatever...simmer, top it off with grated cheese and have a nice roll or crusty baguette with it. That crusty baguette? Well, put the leftover in the fridge. The next night, when you roast a small chicken or broil some chicken thighs, set aside the leftover meat for tomorrow's dinner...toast the baguette halves, lay good cheddar or Swiss cheese on one side and the thinly sliced leftover chicken on the other...toast under the broiler until the cheese bubbles, and throw on some tomatoes & onions...maybe some bbq sauce or salsa. That and a salad. Mmmm. Another thing to do is make sure that you keep some healthier versions of convenience foods around the house so that you have that as an option on days when you just don't even want to deal with cooking, leftovers or no. If you have some microwavable meals, canned soups, instant meals etc around, you won't be as likely to just say "heck with it" and go out to grab fast food. One thing to remember. You will, if you cook for yourself, have times when you throw good food away because you either got tired of it or just forgot it. None of us like to do that, but remember that you could be spending much more money than you throw out by constantly eating out.

Scott, There is no smell like ANY peppers roasting! Truly! If I was trying to sell a house, I'd have peppers and tomatoes dehydrating or roasting in the oven just to fill the house with that delicious aroma. I think a house would sell based on how good it smelled! I miss frying! I miss making home-made fried chicken and chicken fried steaks as well as fried pork chops, and fried potatoes, or my dad's summer garden dish where he'd mix together sliced potatoes, okra, onions and peppers (hot or sweet) and fry them in lard or bacon fat, sprinkling a handful or two of cornmeal over them as he fried them. We never had a name for that dish but I loved to make it, and it too has been relegated to the more fattening meals of our past and no longer is included in the healthier meals of the present day. Tim has high cholesterol, though, so frying things in the old southern style is something we dropped almost entirely at least 15 years ago. Homemade fried chicken still is a favorite birthday meal here in this household, and I'll make it if that's what the birthday person wants. I think that on their birthday a person should get to eat what they want. If you're eating healthy most of the time, an occasional old-style fried southern meal won't hurt. Stockergal, Well, I grew up on meat and potatoes, growing up in Fort Worth a few miles from the Stockyards. Beef was always the main thing we had when I was a kid, but we did have lots of chicken and occasionally pork or fish. It is just that when you live in a Wild West sort of town like Ft. Worth (I am sure OKC was very similar in the same decades) where beef and potatoes are the holy grail of meals, that's what you eat. I'd still rather eat meat and potatoes than anything else, but we do try to eat more fish and poultry now and less red meat. My first job was as a waitress in a steakhouse and I would have eaten steak every day if I could. It has been hard to slowly (way too slowly, most likely) learn to eat in a more healthy manner. Carol, As soon as I saw "hobo dinners", I did instantly think "Boy Scouts!" That's some good eating, and I love hobo dinners. I also love cooking anything/everything outdoors in cast iron dutch ovens, also a remnant, I guess, from our Boy Scout days. Andria, Well, you made me hungry! We do cook a lot less in the heat. I love it when cold weather returns in fall or winter and find myself spending a lot more time in the kitchen then (coincidentally at a time when I am spending less time in the garden). I find eating healthy works best for me one day at a time. (grin) If I had to think that I'd only eat perfectly healthy meals for the rest of my life, I'd rebel and go buy and eat the biggest ribeye I could find, and then I'd finish the meal with incredibly rich and delicious homemade (made from scratch) chocolate cake. An occasional cheat day isn't too bad, but we truly are eating healthier than we ever have, most days. We are trying really hard to eat healthier as we get older, and it isn't always easy. The taste buds want what they want, but I do think that once I cut a lot of junk out of my diet, I don't enjoy it as much when I do eat some of it because my taste buds have learned to enjoy things that are less fattening, less processed, less salty, etc. I suppose that's a good thing, but I miss the days when I was younger and had better metabolism and could eat anything and everything I wanted and never gain an ounce. Those days are gone forever. If I ever find a way to grow my own chocolate, I'm in trouble. Dawn

Don't know what thread you were reading. But you said you wanted the crust to be less thick and puffy than you are getting. Sounds like you don't want the thick armor of crust that I associate with some "fish and chips" shops. And sounds like the commercial product that was right-texture-but-too-salty was a dry mix in which you dip the moistened shrimp. So you might try making a thin batter of just water or milk plus egg, moistening the shrimp in that, then rolling lightly in your own not-too-salty dry mix of flour, salt, pepper, garlic powder, plus bread or panko crumbs, and deep-frying. I don't think it is necessary to get all mad scientist with baking soda, vodka, nanoparticles and dark matter just to deep fry shrimp - no-one's grandma ever did that!

Most folks I know of already eat highly processed nutrition sparse foods. Meats, processed carbs, fat, sugar and salt to feed desire to eat it. A cultivated taste and allows multinational factory-machine-based businesses to use cheap, easily mass-produced and petroleum intensive ingredients that have long shelf lives, ship all over world. That food is affordable to the masses, not the hand-crafted stuff. I see that trend continuing, and fewer and fewer being able to live or even care that they are missing out on the local, foodie lifestyle. We are the exception, not the rule. The menus in the few restaurants in my hometown are ground meat, pizza, chicken, simple pastas, processed carbs, and a choice of onions, carrots, celery and lettuce for vegetables, with perhaps coleslaw and crunchy tomatoes and a dill pickle or two. Of course lots of products made out of commodity crop/genetically modified soybeans and corn, sugar beets and wheat is on it's way towards that. Things that can be grown with minimal human effort but lots of machines and chemicals. I see that trend continuing despite the backlash. Food will less and less resemble the natural ingredients it came from, and we won't care. Also continuation of profiteering on people feeling unwell as a result. And a continuation of people working to counter that, in the counter culture. But they will be rarer and rarer and confined to pockets of culture surrounded by a sea of monotony. Kind of like monasteries kept culture alive in the Middle Ages. One can only hope cool innovative ways to live sustainably will come out of these pockets. Two conflicting tides moving in opposite directions. Some of us will band together and try to keep the old ways and old knowledge alive. Just like they did in the Middle Ages and just like we do now. In my impoverished state, there are some hotbeds of local culture and hand crafted food trends, but out in the hinterlands where the lower middle class and working class mostly live, there is an impoverishment of the food shed. My county used to be riddled with orchards, for example. A viable way for small businesspeople to make a living. Families I grew up with. All gone. Shows no sign of returning. Instead, fruit growing increasingly concentrated to fewer and fewer large growers, and profitable plant breeds. Same apple varieties for sale all over the region. Even the few remaining orchards in my region are struggling. At some point in the near future, the small family food producing business will be almost totally eradicated. It's close to it now, and the ones that are hanging on are running on fumes. Folks will work in agriculture, just not own the food production business. We are trying to figure out how to move to one of the better foodsheds. Everyone I know in my hometown says, "I have to drive somewhere to do all my shopping." Ironic since my town is the county seat and was once thriving with farms. That's how I grew up learning to love eating local. Also ironically, sooner or later it will be more and more difficult to drive somewhere, due to the cost of fuel. That will bring about an interesting dynamic. It's already here in my home town. The food available locally is what the poor people can afford because that's what will sell. The higher end stuff will mostly sit on the shelf. Yes, some left to buy, but not enough to make a profit on vs. cost of having unsold stuff sit on shelves. Our local supermarket is paring down selection, slowly but surely. Slow enough not to panic most folks is the key. Frog in slowly raising temperature water, not immediate boil.