Tip #8: Learn to cook for yourself

I intentionally separate this tip out from the last one on hobbies. Sure, cooking, baking, what have you can be a hobby, but I'm not talking here about the two dozen gingersnaps you made for your friend's birthday party. I'm talking about the mundane kind of cooking, the kind you do for yourself everyday to — you know — eat.

It may sound strange. I mean, of course you have to eat, and of course you have to make food yourself when you're single (and sometimes even when you're not). But why cook for yourself? Why bother with following a recipe and trying to churn out some special edible meal when, in the end, you're just going to sit in front of the television and scarf it down with no one else to share the food with, no one to appreciate the meal, and no one to help clean up afterward? Isn't it enough to just put on some soup, or spaghetti, or a frozen pizza, or a Swanson TV dinner, or a grilled cheese sandwich, or just give up altogether and get something from the Chinese take-out place?

No, it isn't. Convenience foods are notoriously high in fat and/or sodium which can both lead to high blood pressure and a host of other health issues. When you cook your own food, you can generally be more careful of exactly what you are putting into your body. You can even adjust the ingredients as needed to suit your tastes instead of being stuck with whatever someone else put into whatever you're eating. Ultimately, you can strive for a more balanced diet, custom made with your own likes and dislikes. That's the really cool thing about being a single cook: you can truly make it your way without worrying about others. If you like a sprinkle of curry on everything, go ahead and do it. If salty foods turn you off, bland it up. Nobody's going to complain. It also gives you more freedom to experiment with new foods that you haven't tried, or new ways of preparing foods, since you wouldn't be making it if you didn't intend to eat it. And if the result is a disaster that even you can't stomach, you can toss it in the trash without hurting anybody's feelings.

"But it's so tiresome to get out the recipe book after I've been working all day. I just want to eat something quick and go to bed." Oh, whine, whine. If you can't find enough recipes that take 30 minutes or less to prepare, you need to find yourself another resource. Take some time on your day off to go to a bookstore — a real one, with shelves, quiet music, and comfy chairs where you can see and feel the book you're going to buy. Pick up a pile of recipe books and scan through them. Ignore the pictures; it's virtually a guarantee that what you make will look nothing like the photo, and you may even want to save both your money and your self-confidence by getting a book with no pictures at all. Instead, pay attention to how long it takes to prepare most of the meals in the book, increasing the time by about 50%, especially if it assumes ingredients that have already been chopped, minced, sliced, peeled, cored, seeded, etc. Look at the lists of ingredients to see if they include items you already have in your house or can be easily obtained. Look at the portion sizes and calculate downwards to estimate how much you actually need to buy and use for a single serving — unless you're okay with eating the same thing four nights in a row (I'm not). Believe or not, there are recipe books out there which specialize in small serving meals (my personal favorites is Going Solo in the Kitchen by Jane Doerfer). It's easier than you might think to find a cookbook that fits your taste buds, schedule, and lifestyle all at once.

Cooking is a good skill to have, not just in the single life that lasts forever, but even if you're dating. It can add a personal touch to a relationship, a way of sharing something truly special. After all, you made it with your own hands to be consumed exclusively by you and the person you made it for. It rarely gets more intimate than that.

To the guys: Learning this skill is not limited only to women, despite the sexist cliché about the way to a man's heart being through his stomach. There seems to be this ridiculous misconception in society that men are too neanderthal to know how to cook a decent meal, in spite of the fact that most of the world's top chefs are male. I don't know the source of this myth; my theory is that it's some kind of feminist power ploy to convince men that they would starve to death if they didn't have women to cook for them. Regardless, don't fall for the lie. Teaching yourself to cook is easy. Some women have told me that a man who can cook is sexy, but I have yet to see any evidence of that, so don't bank on it. Do it for your own health and self-esteem and the right to give a snarky reply to any woman who expresses amazement that you actually don't need a female to cook for you.