Table for One

About this book

There is half an onion going soft in your refrigerator right now.

It's there because a recipe called for a quarter of one. Same with the bag of spinach, the carton of cream, and most of a can of beans. You paid for all of it, you throw most of it away, and after enough weeks of that, cooking for yourself stops feeling worth the trouble.

Table for One is the no-waste cookbook for one person: genuinely simple meals, built so that what you buy gets used, from a ten-minute fried rice to a Lentil and Tomato Soup that puts a second portion in the freezer.

Inside:

- Every recipe tells you what to do with the rest, the half pepper, the half lemon, the half can.

- Eight ingredients or fewer. Six steps or fewer. Eleven of the twenty recipes take ten minutes or less.

- Calories, sodium and fat worked out for every recipe, before any salt you add yourself.

- Flavor without the salt, the four things that do salt's job, so lighter food doesn't taste like less.

- A short pantry list that carries the whole book. No jar you buy for one recipe and never open again.

- The “other half” chart, fourteen everyday ingredients, and exactly where the rest of each one goes.

- Meals for the days you don't feel like cooking, including several with no cooking at all.

Written for anyone cooking for themselves, maybe for the first time, maybe after years of cooking for a family. No special equipment, no rare ingredients, no lectures.

A kind, practical gift for someone newly on their own, and a genuinely useful book if that someone is you.

Also in the Table for One series: The Slow Cooker for One.

Shopping for a gift? See more ideas for someone cooking for one.