Simple Shifts Podcast: Ideas for Cooking for 1 or 2

In this episode of Simple Shifts: Conversations on Food, Life, Weight & Mindset, Martha McKinnon and Peter Morrison, from Simple Nourished Living, discuss the importance of making small, manageable changes in life and cooking, particularly for individuals or small families. They explore various strategies for cooking for one or two, including small batch baking, repurposing leftovers, and creative meal ideas. The conversation emphasizes the ease of preparing meals with simple ingredients and the benefits of meal prepping to save time and reduce waste.

Key Takeaways

The journey of life is about making simple shifts.

Cooking for one or two can be challenging but manageable.

Small batch recipes help avoid waste and satisfy cravings.

Repurposing leftovers can create new and exciting meals.

Meal prep can save time and make cooking easier.

Using versatile ingredients allows for creative meal assembly.

Sweet treats can be made in smaller portions.

Frozen meals can be a convenient option for busy days.

Eggs are a versatile and quick meal solution.

Prepping ingredients ahead of time can streamline cooking.

Ideas for Cooking for 1 or 2 Podcast

Video Transcript

Martha McKinnon (00:00)
Welcome to Simple Shifts: Conversations on food, life, weight, and mindset. I’m Martha McKinnon from the blog Simple Nourished Living, and this is Peter Morrison, my partner in crime. How are you?

Peter Morrison (00:14)
I’m good, how are you today?

Martha McKinnon (00:16)
Good, good, good, good. So we have a title for our podcast now. That’s exciting, right?

Peter Morrison (00:20)
We do. Yes, it helps provide a little direction and gives a little foundation to what we are doing.

Martha McKinnon (00:33)
Yeah, so it helps people understand what we’re all about here, what we’re focusing on. And we’re big advocates of the fact that this journey that we’re on through life is all about simple shifts and tiny changes and not really overwhelming ourselves by trying to totally remake ourselves overnight. Right? Because we tried that for years. And it didn’t work.

Peter Morrison (00:53)
Doing too much too soon, do too much at one time.

Everybody does, yeah.

Martha McKinnon (01:01)
Right? Everybody does. Like the New Year’s resolution thing. Right? We’ve all talked about that. I’m never eating sugar again. I’m going to the gym every day. We make these grandiose resolutions to totally redo our lives, overnight. And it just doesn’t, it doesn’t work because it just goes against human behavior. We’re working against ourselves.

So I’m really excited to share and explore more about how we can work with ourselves in a way that feels easy and attractive and satisfying because it really can make the journey be much more satisfying when we understand how to go about it. Simple shifts here we are. Good. Good, good, good. So our topic for today is a big one because it comes up again and again on our website and it’s all about how to eat.

Peter Morrison (01:47)
I like it.

Martha McKinnon (01:58)
How to cook for one or two, because many of us are a small families of one or two and it’s tricky you know, it can be tricky because a lot of recipes are designed for you know six to eight servings, so that’s a topic that comes up again and again. But before we dive in, what’s new what’s good in your world.

Peter Morrison (02:25)
Well, it sort of fits with this topic. I found at the store the other day, I found up and picked up a package of cookie mix. It’s from Swerve. The sweetener I think it’s allulose. But Swerve put out a package of monster cookie mix, which I picked up and I hope to do a little product review and get those baked and up on the website.

Martha McKinnon (02:39)
Okay. Okay.

Peter Morrison (02:55)
But it makes 15 cookies, Which is kind of a lot for two people, but it’s not 24 or 36 or 48 like many recipes would be, and you can also share them. So most everything was in the package. You just needed to add, what is it, an egg?

Martha McKinnon (02:58)
That’s fun.

Peter Morrison (03:24)
A little bit of milk, and some peanut butter, I believe.

Martha McKinnon (03:31)
Okay, well that sounds yummy. Were they good?

Peter Morrison (03:33)
Haven’t made them yet. So I just picked up the package, because it jumped off the shelf at me. And I love baking from scratch, but especially for families of two, like myself with no kids, sometimes a healthier mix, a lighter mix that just makes a smaller amount fits the bill.

Martha McKinnon (03:34)
Okay, you haven’t made them. All right, so we’ll hear about that. Okay. Yeah.

Right. Right. Right, right, absolutely. And so the small batch baking is a good topic and it fits right on, fits right in with this. So what are some of the other ways that you satisfy like a sweet craving with smaller, like smaller portions and smaller recipes? What are some of the recipes on our site that have done really well and around that?

Peter Morrison (04:17)
The Snickers Mini Tarts. I made something similar, Mini Buffalo Chicken Bites for a gathering and something about the easy to eat finger food, is very appealing. For the Snickers Mini Tarts, all you do is essentially cut up a Snickers bar into bite sized pieces.

Martha McKinnon (04:20)
Okay. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Peter Morrison (04:46)
Then add them to the mini filo dough hard crunchy shells. And I think those were topped with maybe you added some additional peanuts and just heat them in the, you could heat them in the toaster oven actually.

Martha McKinnon (04:58)
Okay, yep.

Right? Or air fryer, toast oven, you don’t even have to turn on your whole oven, right?

And you could do, I mean, the cool thing about that is if you just have the tiny Snickers bars, right? You could just make a few, two or three of them. Yeah, which is nice. So that’s a nice little sweet treat. The mug cakes are pretty cool. You know, I like the whole three, two, one mug cake and that uses the two cake mixes, the angel food cake and the devil’s food cake mix. But you can mix different flavors.

Peter Morrison (05:13)
Mm-hmm. Exactly. Mm-hmm.

Martha McKinnon (05:32)
And you mix together so you have a huge amount of the mix once you mix those two cake mixes together and then you just have to add some water and put it in a mug in the microwave for a minute, maybe a little longer depending on the power of your microwave and cake, which is always nice because you know, big cakes can be dangerous, right for one or two.

Peter Morrison (05:54)
Sure. So you mix up the two mixes and then you just store the dry mix in a container?

Martha McKinnon (06:01)
Right, so you mix the two cake mixes together, the angel food, and you need the angel food cake that just requires you to add water. And I think it’s, you know, Betty Crocker is the one that I see most often. And then any other cake mix, I use Devil’s food, but any flavor cake mix that you like, you mix the two mixes together and then you just store it in a big Ziploc bag or any type of airtight container.

And then it’s basically it’s called three two one. So it’s three tablespoons of that mix, two tablespoons of water stirred together in a mug that you then microwave typically for a minute, you know, and again, you might have to adjust that and then you just let it rest, you know, for a little bit until it cools off so you don’t burn your mouth and you have cake that, can satisfy that craving for cake when you don’t want to bake a whole recipe’s worth. So that’s a good dessert.

Peter Morrison (06:55)
Have you by chance tried that in the air fryer yet to cook that?

Martha McKinnon (07:00)
I have not tried it in the air fryer. No, it might be worth it, or toaster oven. It’s probably going to take as long as a muffin would take to cook. Right. So probably 12 or 15 minutes but you would have to play with it, like in a toaster oven. But if you didn’t want to use a microwave, it’d be interesting to see how the texture, you know, changes.

Peter Morrison (07:01)
Me either. Might be worth a little experiment.

That’s true. Mm-hmm.

Martha McKinnon (07:27)
What are some other ways that you satisfy the craving for something sweet for only one or two people?

Peter Morrison (07:30)
Well, we also have a recipe for small batch chocolate chip cookies. I think the original recipe was called tablespoon, because it uses a lot of tablespoon measurements. Then as you’re dropping the cookie dough on the cookie sheet, you just use a tablespoon of batter. And I don’t remember exactly. I think it made 12 or 15, 10 or 12 cookies.

Martha McKinnon (07:36)
Mm-hmm. Yep. Mm-hmm.

Yeah, so small batches are good and oftentimes, you know, recipes for cookies and things can be divided in half. But it takes some kitchen math to do that. So we do have and we will link out in the show notes to a lot of the recipes that exist already for one or two to help the readers here.

Peter Morrison (08:04)
Mm-hmm. I think the frozen cool whip banana split is a good one for the ice cream craving.

Martha McKinnon (08:27)
Absolutely. And that’s so funny how that came into my world. Right? If you’re craving ice cream and you don’t have any. There are a lot of lower calorie ice creams available now too, Halo Top and things like that. But yeah, this was a recipe that I actually learned of and it was an interview. I don’t know. I can’t even remember, but it was Oprah and Tina Fey and Tina Fey revealed that at one time she went to Weight Watchers.

She was a long time Weight Watcher and this was one of the recipes that has stood the test of time for her. was a few years ago and basically she just would take a little bit of Cool Whip from the freezer which has a really soft almost like soft serve kind of consistency and then add strawberries and bananas and just a little drizzle of chocolate syrup and she called it her faux banana split.

So really really tasty and again it is single serve, which is nice.

Yeah, so probably we need to move on from sweet treats because it feels like we can always figure that out somehow. So other ideas for cooking for one and two. What’s your approach? I mean, you’re a family of two.

Peter Morrison (09:31)
Well, we don’t, I don’t mind leftovers. I actually kind of like leftovers. So, because I like repurposing leftovers, I always like to try to make them different than the original meal.

Martha McKinnon (09:50)
Yeah. Yeah.

So, I mean, I think that would be really encouraging for people, especially if you don’t love to cook, right? The fact that, like, leftovers can be a really nice thing. You don’t have to necessarily eat them the same way, although sometimes I don’t even mind that, you know. I made, yeah, I remade one of our recipes last night, like one old one from the archives, and for like the chicken broccoli casserole, which I just love.

Peter Morrison (10:18)
Mm-hmm.

Martha McKinnon (10:30)
And it came out so good. It’s basically just chicken and cooked broccoli and a lighter cream of chicken soup, a little milk, just a little bit of lemon juice all stirred together, put into a pan and then topped with a little bit of shredded cheese and then bread crumbs mixed with a little parmesan sprinkled on top. And I used the panko instead of the regular bread crumbs. And I did bake it on the bake setting in the air fryer.

And it came out so, I mean, really the top was really, really crispy. And, you know, Rod and I both enjoyed it very much on the first night. And we had it again last night. And it was, you know, we just warmed it in the microwave and it still was good and yummy. And so I like you, I’m a fan of leftovers. But you wouldn’t have to eat it two nights in a row. You know, it would stay in the fridge for a few days.

I mean, it’s something also that you could defrost, right, and then pull out to frost and then rewarm on a time when you just didn’t want to have the energy to cook. So that was really fun for us. Yeah, talk to us more about the whole repurposing leftovers. That’s one thing I’m trying to include now more in our weekly meal plans.

When I put those out on Friday, when we do share a recipe that makes multiple servings, I’m including ideas for how to change it up, mix it up in ways that you might not think of immediately, just to help people, again, who are cooking for one or two, to have to cook once and then eat two or three times, which I think is wonderful if you don’t like to spend lots of time in the kitchen.

Martha McKinnon (12:18)
Yeah, so other things that you do like examples of foods that you’ve repurposed successfully?

Peter Morrison (12:24)
Ooh, well everything, I mean, like you, we’re soup lovers, so a lot of different recipes and meals can be turned into soup. You could make lasagna soup with leftover lasagna. You could use veggie broth.

Martha McKinnon (12:30)
Yep. So a lot of foods when you start to think about how they could be turned into a soup, right? Like we have like a cabbage roll casserole that you cook in the slow cooker on the website and that could easily, the leftovers could easily be turned into like a cabbage roll soup. We have lots of examples of recipes that we’ll share. Again, we’ll put some more ideas in our show notes. What are other things that you do that are really great for one or two?

Peter Morrison (13:07)
Well, if you have a pizza craving, really, really like English muffin pizzas, or I actually might prefer tortilla pizzas. And there’s a recipe for, it’s not really a recipe, but pita pizzas. I was really happy with this because you could use one pita bread and make the pizza.

Martha McKinnon (13:16)
Mm-hmm.

Peter Morrison (13:43)
But I cut the pita in half lengthwise, not in half like a cross. So you’ve had like two whole pitas, but they were just half of the pita, very thin with a little pizza sauce or marinara. you could, I think I put turkey pepperoni on it. And they were just so crispy and so light.

Martha McKinnon (13:46)
Okay. Right.

Mm-hmm. Thin crust, or extra thin crust pizza.

Peter Morrison (14:11)
But, I prefer thin crust pizza. And I like English muffin pizzas, but sometimes I just prefer either the low carb tortilla or the pita bread. I really like the crispy pita bread pizza.

Martha McKinnon (14:23)
Yeah, so a naan is another bread, the small mini naan. So a lot of ways to make little pizzas for yourself that are pretty easy. And again, you can top those in a multitude of ways depending on what you like. I’m a big fan of like the barbecued chicken pizza. And I often have leftover cooked chicken and with a little bit of barbecue sauce, a little cheese, mushrooms, you know. And bell pepper can be really yummy.

Of course you can go with the traditional tomato sauce, pesto sauce. So many things you can do with those tortillas like you said, or pitas or English muffins to make yourself a pizza.

Peter Morrison (15:08)
Mm-hmm.

Martha McKinnon (15:08)
Potatoes are another thing that we like – just to bake a potato. I mean if you plan ahead, of course you can do it in the toaster oven, oven, air fryer, which will take anywhere from a half hour to an hour depending on your potato or you can of course just microwave it in you know five minutes or so. And there’s all different ways you can top a potato, you could use Greek yogurt and a cheese, little bacon bits. I love chili and if I have leftover chili around, that’s a great way to again repurpose the chili and give it a you know, just a totally different feel.

Peter Morrison (15:50)
I’ve always loved broccoli cheese potatoes.

Martha McKinnon (15:53)
Mm-hmm, right, broccoli cheese. And you can buy the frozen, often you’ll find like broccoli and cheese sauce, right, in the frozen food section if you don’t want to make your own broccoli cheese sauce. Absolutely, broccoli cheese is another good one. Yup, tuna, you know, tuna can be good. Cottage cheese, another one I learned way back in the Weight Watchers days was cottage cheese and salsa potato, again, for some good protein.

So lots you can do with a baked potato when you’re one person. Sandwiches, you know, as the older we get, less, because sometimes we’ll go out for lunch and things. at dinner by dinner, we just don’t need something, you know, substantial or sandwiches can be very substantial. And so I love and again, they can be, you know, open face sandwiches or traditional sandwiches, paninis, grilled cheese.

Peter Morrison (16:27)
Wraps.

Martha McKinnon (16:51)
There’s just a lot you can do to make interesting sandwiches for one or two. And we’ve got again several recipes on our website that we can link out to in the notes.

Peter Morrison (17:02)
And if you’re keeping it lower carb or less bread, lavash wraps make wonderful wraps.

Martha McKinnon (17:06)
Wraps, right? Another form of sandwich, right? Absolutely. You can use low carb tortillas, can use lavash to make a wrap instead of using bread.

Peter Morrison (17:15)
Mm-hmm.

Martha McKinnon (17:23)
What else comes to mind? The frozen meals. There’s a lot of better frozen meals that are out there too. And they can work for one or, you know, when you’re eating for one or two, you just have to try out what you know, what works for you. It may take some hit or miss. Rod still loves like Stouffer’s. I don’t know if it’s Turkey Tetrazzini or Chicken Tetrazzini. I mean, he’s been eating that for goodness knows how long and it’s something that he’s really happy having.

Peter Morrison (17:37)
Mm-hmm.

Martha McKinnon (17:52)
Like if on a night where we just don’t really want to cook. Just to make that and all I have to do is then make a salad to go with it. So we have that once in a while when you just don’t feel like cooking. It’s good to have a few of those in the freezer to pull out. Eggs.

Peter Morrison (18:08)
Eggs, I was just thinking eggs in the microwave. It’s a simple.

Martha McKinnon (18:11)
Right?

Eggs in the microwave in a mug or like just a simple one pan like in an omelette, frittatas. There’s a lot of things you can do with eggs, you know, to serve one or two.

Peter Morrison (18:25)
You could just hard boil six or eight and have them in the fridge ready to go. They make good toast toppings.

Martha McKinnon (18:31)
Right? Right? To make a simple egg salad.

Lots of things, lots of ways to top toast, right? Like for open faced. The other thing I like to have around too is just like frozen veggie patties. So and you have to find again the right veggie patty. There’s so many choices, but find a veggie patty that you really like.

And you can warm them on the stovetop or in the toaster oven. And I like those on, you know, a light English muffin with lettuce, tomato, avocado. I mean, that can be a really delicious meal. And if you’re feeling really hungry, you can again make a little salad on the side or a cup of soup. There are lots of good soups out there, both on the shelves and if you have leftover homemade soup. You know that that makes a great meal.

Peter Morrison (19:16)
Mm-hmm.

Martha McKinnon (19:26)
Anything else comes to mind? I think we’ve given a lot of ideas here.

Peter Morrison (19:33)
Let’s see if I can pull up the site.

Martha McKinnon (19:36)
Yeah, we’ve got a few posts that we’ll link out in the show notes as well, where we explore and have sort of consolidated recipes that work for one or two.

Peter Morrison (19:48)
Your apple pancake puff microwave meal.

Martha McKinnon (19:51)
Yep, right. So microwave these little dishes that you can make in the microwave can be fun because that’s just a handful of ingredients cooked together. Makes a nice meal. Cereal sometimes every once in a while, especially in the colder months. I know cereal can be a good reset for me sometimes too. Just to opt for cereal with fruit and milk for an evening meal or for lunch.

All right, so we’d love for our readers to share other ideas that they have for coming up with meals for one or two. I mean, the other thing I was just going to say, another one that I really love that’s so, so, simple. It’s a slow cooker recipe and it’s just a bag of frozen Asian style vegetables with a couple of frozen salmon filets. And then there’s a simple sauce that you make using soy and lemon and something else.

And again, this slow cooker salmon doesn’t take that long. It’s like, I think two, two to three hours and you want to, me, in the slow cooker in the two quarts, slow cooker and that every time I make it, we just, really enjoy it. So, so super simple. So tiny crock pot, you know, two to three quart can be a good investment when you’re looking to make smaller quantities, because many recipes can just be divided in half.

Many slow cooker recipes can be cooked in a smaller slow cooker if you don’t want the leftovers. So that’s another good strategy.

Peter Morrison (21:31)
Do you think that salmon recipe that you just described would work with chicken tenders or chicken breasts?

Martha McKinnon (21:38)
Sure, absolutely. I think if you didn’t want to use the salmon and I’ll try that because it we really do enjoy it. So I will try it with chicken and that’ll give us another alternative. Absolutely. Probably shrimp too. Although the shrimp you might have to add in a little later because they might cook really fast.

Peter Morrison (21:55)
Hmm.

Martha McKinnon (21:59)
So we could just do this all day, right? Just kind of riff on ideas. But we’d love for you guys to share in the comments if you have thoughts and ideas for ways that you cook and or eat. Or we talk a lot about sort of assembling meals where you have just a few different ingredients in your fridge and then you just assemble them in different ways, in different bowls and things. So.

Peter Morrison (22:02)
Right?

Martha McKinnon (22:27)
Prepping a few foods ahead like if you have some cooked quinoa, cooked rice, right, leftover in the fridge, you have some leftover protein in your fridge and maybe on the weekend you maybe cook up roast a tray of vegetables, suddenly now you’ve got these components that you can put together in a variety of ways that make, you know, dinner like in minutes, which can be a fun strategy too.

Any other thoughts?

Peter Morrison (22:56)
No, I don’t, my mind’s going blank at the moment.

Martha McKinnon (23:03)
Well, I think we’ve given a lot of good ideas. all right. So I think it’s time for a wrap. Thanks so much for tuning in today. And if you like what we’re doing here, we would love to have you subscribe and or please get the word out, share us with other friends, family who you think would enjoy these conversations. So thanks so much for tuning in and we’ll be back soon.

Peter Morrison (23:32)
Have a great day.

Martha McKinnon (23:33)
Bye bye.