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People 'cooking for one' share their 13 practical tips for saving money and reducing waste

"I batch-cook more, freeze more, and I’m way less anxious about stuff going bad."

Image via Canva/corelens

People who 'cook for one' share their best money-saving tips that minimize food waste.

Cooking for one is a culinary challenge. Not only can cooking for one be difficult financially, but it can lead to food waste.

Thankfully, mastering how to cook for one is something a lot of single people and solo at-home chefs have nailed. They offered their best tips for how to cook for one person while still saving money and minimizing food waste.

These are 13 of the most useful tips to help people who live alone grocery shop, prep, and store food when cooking for one.

- YouTube www.youtube.com

"Make your freezer your best friend. Cook larger portions (soup, chili, curry, lasagna, etc.) and freeze in single-meal containers. Portion things right away like meat, bread, even pasta sauce cubes in ice trays. Future-you will thank you. A vacuum sealer or silicone freezer molds ('Soupercubes') make it easier." - illeatmyletter

"For freezing 'leftovers'...instead of containers, I use zip lock bags. I freeze them flat(ish) and then once frozen, they can stand up, almost like a filing system. Saves heaps of room in the freezer and you can write what they are above the zippy bits for the full filing system effect." - P2X-555

"Plan meals around one ingredient. If you buy cabbage (or any big veg), plan 2–3 different meals with it that week e.g. gyoza, slaw, stir-fry, soup. Herbs and sauces? Try to use them in multiple recipes so they don’t die in the fridge." - illeatmyletter

@simplysarahhart

Cooking for one certainly takes some getting used to but when you utilize your freezer and batch cooking, it gets easier. Freezer meals aren’t just for large families. You can make them as a single person.

"Another tip is to buy whole if possible - whole heads of lettuce, cabbage, peppers, etc. Lots of fresh veggies last much longer when whole than sliced. You can peel off leaves as you need them or buy when on sale and eat later." - mopasali

"Have a 'use it or lose it' shelf. Keep soon-to-expire food in one visible spot in the fridge so you don’t forget it." - illeatmyletter

@simplysarahhart

Cooking for one certainly takes some getting used to but when you utilize your freezer and batch cooking, it gets easier. Freezer meals aren’t just for large families. You can make them as a single person.


"Shop with purpose. Make the meal plan first, then shop for just those items. Buy smaller quantities when possible (butchers can weigh exact portions, some stores sell single carrots, etc.). Shop more often in smaller amounts rather than giant stock-ups." - illeatmyletter

"Think with framework by Ethan Chloebowski is actually decent, of thinking about ingredient(s) in a framework does saving food and leftover. Personally I'm following this, as it's pretty flexible, can with with eastern/asia and western recipes." - mell1suga

- YouTube www.youtube.com

"Flexible recipes are gold. Stir-fries, soups, casseroles, fried rice, stews, all are perfect for tossing in whatever you need to use up." - illeatmyletter

"Don't go grocery shopping or ordering groceries while hungry. You will select far more than planned and appropriate. The same applies to filling your plate and portioning your batch-cooked stuff, do this after you've eaten. Half the plate is reserved for the veggies. And of course every meal starts with a salad (with self-made dressing, usually a vinaigrette variation)." - MaxTheCatigator

"Accept some waste. Several people said: you won’t get it perfect, and that’s fine. Even a little less waste makes a big difference." - illeatmyletter

@fitgreenmind

SINGLE HOUSEHOLD RECIPES 👩‍🍳 Cooking for only one person can be harrrrd, so stay tuned for the next 6 recipes… delicious stuff is coming.😌 - REZEPTE FÜR EINE/N 👩‍🍳 Für nur eine Person zu kochen kann schwer sein, also freu dich auf die nächsten 6 Rezepte … es kommen sehr schmackofatze Sachen.😌 #easyveganmeals #easyrecipes#easyveganrecipes #quickrecipes #vegancooking

"Experiment & preserve. Try homemade kimchi, sauerkraut, or pickling if you’ve got too much cabbage/veg. Blanch and freeze produce for later. Don’t be afraid to freestyle, curry paste + shredded cabbage = surprisingly good meal." - illeatmyletter

"Make sure your fridge is actually cold. Most vegetables can last over a week in a fridge without losing quality. Idk how long we have had the now nub of cabbage in the fridge but it's still fine. Meat will usually last 5-7 days too if it's kept cold enough (ours has a 4th door). You just don't want it so cold it freezes foods. Also there's hot spots and cold spots that can be leveraged. Also how to store food, just about anything that off gasses (potatoes, apples, onions, etc) can most of the time be stored on the counter for a while. Keeping them in the fridge will cause other produce to spoil faster. What you do keep in the fridge, keep the slider vent to closed. Wash lettuce and wrap it in a kitchen towel and it keeps a while." - permalink_save

Keeping food fresh means more flexibility to use it up."Use helpful tools. A few folks mentioned that apps like Oh, a potato! or Cooklist can make it easier to spot recipes that use up what you’ve already got.. Even just keeping a notes app list of what’s in your fridge can help a lot." - illeatmyletter

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Dumpster diver's videos highlight the obscene amount of perfectly good stuff stores throw away

@dumpsterdivingfreegan/TikTok

A dumpster-diving TikTok user is taking stores to task for what they throw away.

Do you ever think about how we live in a world that is perfectly capable of producing enough food and basic necessities for every human on the planet, and yet there are still millions upon millions who don't have enough?

We do. It's weird and inhumane, but it's reality. There are multiple, somewhat complex reasons for this, of course, which don't justify but do explain it. However, the economics and logistics of making sure everyone has what they need don't need to be understood to recognize extreme, blatant, inexcusable waste.

A TikTok user who goes by @dumpsterdivingfreegan shares videos of what she finds in the dumpsters of grocery stores, and it's completely mind-blowing. Even if you already know that stores waste a lot of food, wait until you see what she finds. It's not just food that's at or near its expiration date, though there is a lot of that. She finds toiletries and household items—sometimes by the case, all brand new—just thrown into the dumpster.

Watch:

@dumpsterdivingfreegan

Visit TikTok to discover videos!

Many of us would question pulling perishables from a dumpster, but if it's cold enough outside and you knew they'd been tossed recently, why not? In a logical world, these foods would only be thrown out because there was something wrong with them, but that does not seem to be the case.

In another video, she said she hasn't bought groceries in two years because she's able to get so much from dumpster diving.

@dumpsterdivingfreegan

Visit TikTok to discover videos!

She also says she donates far more than she keeps, and she does leave things behind for other people or homeless people to find. There is always plenty to go around.

She wipes down what she can with disinfectant and hasn't run into any issues with food being bad or anyone in her household getting sick from eating it.

When you see what and how much stores are tossing—perfectly good food that's not even at its best by date yet—it's understandable that she hasn't had to buy groceries. According to Business Insider, grocery stores are responsible for about 10% of the food waste in the United States.

@dumpsterdivingfreegan

Visit TikTok to discover videos!

But it's not just food.

Stores throw away all kinds of merchandise. According to this dumpster diver, many stores have a policy that they throw away cases of product if one item in the case gets broken. She has found cases of wine where just one bottle was broken. And check out this case of perfectly good plants that some people paid good money for:

@dumpsterdivingfreegan

Visit TikTok to discover videos!

And if perfectly good plants being tossed isn't enough to move you, how about toilet paper? That's right. The precious commodity that people were waiting in ridiculous lines for and rationing due to hoarding-induced-scarcity. But not just any toilet paper! The environmentally friendly bamboo kind that costs far more than toilet paper should, tossed into a dumpster for reasons none of us can guess.

@dumpsterdivingfreegan

Visit TikTok to discover videos!

The irony of a store that sells all kinds of eco-friendly items throwing so much into landfills unnecessarily is enough to make your brain explode.

Why don't they donate this stuff instead of throwing it away? Yes. That is the million-dollar question.

Some stores do donate some or most of their overstocked or close-to-due-date items. But as we see here, the habit is not universal, it might vary from location to location, and some stores actually have policies against it for whatever reason. It seems reasonable in the modern world to expect perfectly good items to not end up in landfills when people are in need of them and when our Earth is already dealing with too much trash. It makes no sense.

You probably have dozens of questions for @dumpsterdivingfreegan and she answers tons of them in her videos and comments. I highly recommend perusing her TikTok channel, where she's really an open book about money and dumpster diving. While it's seriously shocking what she finds, it's equally interesting how she lives her life and organizes her finances.

And it will definitely motivate you to find out if stores in your area throw out merchandise and to encourage them to find a more humane and environmentally conscious way to process excess, because the waste in these videos is simply obscene.

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France has started forcing supermarkets to donate food instead of throwing it away.

via EarthFix / Flickr

What will future generations never believe that we tolerated in 2019?

Dolphin and orca captivity, for sure. They'll probably shake their heads at how people died because they couldn't afford healthcare. And, they'll be completely mystified at the amount of food some people waste while others go starving.

According to Biological Diversity, "An estimated 40 percent of the food produced in the United States is wasted every year, costing households, businesses and farms about $218 billion annually."

There are so many things wrong with this.

First of all it's a waste of money for the households who throw out good food. Second, it's a waste of all of the resources that went into growing the food, including the animals who gave their lives for the meal. Third, there's something very wrong with throwing out food when one in eight Americans struggle with hunger.

Supermarkets are just as guilty of this unnecessary waste as consumers. About 10% of all food waste are supermarket products thrown out before they've reached their expiration date.

Three years ago, France took big steps to combat food waste by making a law that bans grocery stores from throwing away edible food.According to the new ordinance, stores can be fined for up to $4,500 for each infraction.

Previously, the French threw out 7.1 million tons of food. Sixty-seven percent of which was tossed by consumers, 15% by restaurants, and 11% by grocery stores.

This has created a network of over 5,000 charities that accept the food from supermarkets and donate them to charity. The law also struck down agreements between supermarkets and manufacturers that prohibited the stores from donating food to charities.

"There was one food manufacturer that was not authorized to donate the sandwiches it made for a particular supermarket brand. But now, we get 30,000 sandwiches a month from them — sandwiches that used to be thrown away," Jacques Bailet, head of the French network of food banks known as Banques Alimentaires, told NPR.

It's expected that similar laws may spread through Europe, but people are a lot less confident at it happening in the United States. The USDA believes that the biggest barrier to such a program would be cost to the charities and or supermarkets.

"The logistics of getting safe, wholesome, edible food from anywhere to people that can use it is really difficult," the organization said according to Gizmodo. "If you're having to set up a really expensive system to recover marginal amounts of food, that's not good for anybody."

Plus, the idea may seem a little too "socialist" for the average American's appetite.

"The French version is quite socialist, but I would say in a great way because you're providing a way where they [supermarkets] have to do the beneficial things not only for the environment, but from an ethical standpoint of getting healthy food to those who need it and minimizing some of the harmful greenhouse gas emissions that come when food ends up in a landfill," Jonathan Bloom, the author of American Wasteland, told NPR.

However, just because something may be socialist doesn't mean it's wrong. The greater wrong is the insane waste of money, damage to the environment, and devastation caused by hunger that can easily be avoided.

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This woman was struggling to find fresh food. She never expected this solution.

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The Rockefeller Foundation

How do you get healthy food on the table when you can't find any?

This is a question that Ortilia Lujan Flores had grappled with many times before.

She wanted affordable, nutritious food, but lived in a neighborhood that didn’t have an accessible grocery store.

Flores couldn't drive, which limited the few food options she had. "There was nowhere to go," she explains.

All images via Upworthy.

Flores isn't the only one that's struggled with this problem — 41 million Americans don't have consistent access to nutritious food.

But when she moved to Denver's Elyria-Swansea neighborhood, she discovered a nonprofit that made all the difference.

This nonprofit is called The GrowHaus, and it takes a community-led approach to tackling food insecurity by giving neighbors the tools they need to improve their access food.

The GrowHaus knew that their community's challenges went far beyond a lack of grocery stores. They looked at everything from local food production to food waste and education, and they found that the issues residents were struggling with all seemed to be connected.

To address the food crisis in their community, then, they needed to think bigger.

That's why The GrowHaus partnered with Denver Food Rescue, an organization that rescues food from donors (like stores and restaurants). Volunteers travel by bike and deliver that rescued food to The GrowHaus, where volunteers then distribute it to local families — ensuring it can be eaten rather than thrown away.

And that's no small potatoes. According to a recent report by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), supported by The Rockefeller Foundation, there's great potential to expand food rescue in Denver.

The NRDC found that under optimal conditions, 4,232 tons of additional food could be rescued each year — equivalent to 7.1 million meals — from retail, institutional and restaurant locations within the city. When organizations like The GrowHaus take advantage of rescued food, everybody wins.

But that was just the beginning of their efforts. The GrowHaus also wanted to ensure that residents like Flores could actually access fresh food more conveniently, too.

So they established a neighborhood market, Mercado de al Lado, which has fresh produce as well as meat and dairy products, most of which is organic and/or local. The market uses a tiered pricing system to ensure that the food is accessible to everyone, including SNAP recipients.

"I saw that they sell organic, nutritious things," Flores explains. She was surprised to see this kind of food in her neighborhood, especially after struggling to find it for so long.

The GrowHaus also has a solution for residents, like Flores, who can't drive to the market. They offer a weekly food box filled with fresh fruits, vegetables, and dry goods sourced from as many local farms as possible and deliver right to their doors at affordable prices.

"It has what people need," Flores says. "Vegetables, potatoes, sometimes they bring eggs. So, things that nourish us."

If you're not a cooking aficionado, The GrowHaus also offers weekly bilingual cooking classes. Every week, volunteer nutritionists teach residents about the importance of healthy eating and how to prepare different foods.

After sharing a meal together, participants get to fill a box with produce to take home from The GrowHaus' free food pantry. By sharing unsold produce from their market, The Growhaus helps to ensure the sustainability of their own food system.

The GrowHaus is even growing their own food and empowering other residents to do the same.

They now have multiple urban farms, all of which focus on sustainability and education.

There's a hydroponics farm, which grows plants in a nutrient solution or in eco-friendly perlite or gravel instead of soil. The farm produces around 1,200 heads of leafy greens per week but manages to use 90% less water than a conventional farm.

They also have a seedling nursery to help residents establish their own gardens. And for community members still working on their green thumbs, there's a Growasis — a permaculture farm. Here, residents can also learn more about sustainable practices, like how to compost or even raise chickens.

"They are always looking at what we need," Flores explains.

Tackling food insecurity isn't easy. But thanks to organizations like The GrowHaus, people like Flores are able to create their own solutions.

Community members in Elyria-Swansea are now growing their own food, educating one another about nutrition, feeding their neighbors, and best of all, ensuring that everyone has a seat at the table, no matter who they are.

Up to 40% of food is wasted in the United States, yet millions of people are unsure where their next meal is coming from. Redistributing just 15% of the food that is currently discarded could feed 25 million people.

And The GrowHaus hopes that by modeling that impact, they'll show what is possible for communities around the country.

For more than 100 years, The Rockefeller Foundation’s mission has been to promote the well-being of humanity throughout the world. Together with partners and grantees, The Rockefeller Foundation strives to catalyze and scale transformative innovations, create unlikely partnerships that span sectors, and take risks others cannot – or will not.

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