Our nest officially emptied last year, temporarily refilled over the summer and now we are looking at it re-emptying mid August. DH and I like cooking, and usually make big pots of soup or salads to eat throughout the week.
However, we would also love recipes and recommendations from those whose nests have been empty long enough to have a real rhythm to their meal planning and making. Do you graze in your empty nest? Have you figured out how to meal prep/plan for two regularly? Are you a singleton who has a different way of meal planning?
Looking for some new inspiration for delicious meals that don’t produce enough food for growing teens.
Our next emptied slowly as our kids graduated high school in 2007, 2010, 2015.
With that smaller
Footprint and also with new interests and hobbies, I often cook once for 2 nights. I like cooking but I like spending time on activities I like more! So it’s AWESOME to have one cook last for two nights.
I sort of never understood the adjustment for less people. But I get that different people have different cooking habits and skills. Some MUST follow a recipe exactly.
To me cook more of what you like but decrease your ingredients!
We’ve been empty nesters for a long time now, but haven’t changed how we cook. We don’t scale down recipes or look for those portioned for two. Instead, we make a recipe as written freezing any excess as prepared entrees for when we don’t feel like cooking or have the time to cook. Our freezer is our Door Dash.
Over the years, we collected favorite recipes in a handy binder which I now have in online files so I can access them wherever we are. Each week, we decide what to have that week and shop for any missing ingredients. We turn on the music and enjoy m/cocktail hour before dinner each evening, and we cook those pre-planned meals together. We’ve been doing this (or a version of it) for four decades. Time in the kitchen is our best time. Our son leaving our nest only meant one empty seat.
ETA: One of our favorites for warm weather (82 here in the woods today) is gazpacho. I have a huge bowl marinating on the counter for dinner tonight. This recipe makes enough to provide several additional lunches/sides going forward this week:
What we have changed is our behavior. Our dinner times vary as well as our takeouts. We have a lot more spinach for salads, nuts, fruit, and less meat at home. Airfry has added an option in that we don’t have to turn on the oven.
I don’t follow a recipe but that looks like pretty much how I make it, but I use an immersion blender to make it smooth. Our garden is producing a couple of tomatoes a day, but I just keep on eating them with salt/pepper. It’s one of my favorite seasonal summer dishes.
We aren’t grazers and we have kept up family dinners, even though it’s just the two of us. It’s our time to get together and debrief about our day.
I don’t think I’ve altered that much what we make, and my adjustment was just from 3 to 2 people so not as big of a shift than larger families.
In the summer my H grills and we do more salads. Overall we try to eat seasonally. We typically eat fish 2-3 nights/week, have 1-2 vegetarian meals, 1 night of chicken, and then 1 night of a different meat. In the winter we’re more apt to do soups and stews.
As empty nesters we started subscribing to Blue Apron. That was 3 nights/ week we did not have to plan and shop for. Now that I am solo I am continuing that. I either eat the second portion the next day for lunch or it’s another nights dinner. I’m good with that.
I am finding that the foods my wife and I like to eat for dinner are starting to diverge; not that each of us always eats something different from the other at dinner, but it has become more noticeable that there are things she cooks that I am not interested much in eating, and vice versa.
I will usually cook a big pot of soup, or multiple servings of some sort of pasta dish, on Saturday mornings or Sunday afternoons and then freeze them into smaller portions for me to eat either at dinner or as something that I can take into the office to eat for lunch.
H and I eat a lot of salads for dinner. I either get a rotisserie chicken from Costco or I’ll bake a bunch of chicken breasts with different seasonings and use those on salads during the week. Last night we had mixed greens with rotisserie chicken, fresh strawberries, slivered almonds, crumbled goat cheese and a light vinaigrette dressing.
Tonight we will have arugula, topped with red onion, cheese tortellini, rotisserie chicken, shaved parmesan and a homemade lemon, garlic, honey dressing.
Since we only have one daughter the empty nest cooking shift was not huge - going from cooking for 3 to cooking for 2. Our big shift occurred once my husband retired. He took over almost all the cooking and food shopping duties. In addition, on most days now we eat a late lunch early supper instead of both lunch and dinner. So usually our big meal is around 3-4 o’clock.
I live alone. I cooked for 5 people for 25 years (like many of you). I buy a lot of soup already made. I heat it with rice and/or vegetables to stretch it for an extra day. Otherwise I basically graze. I need to get back to cooking and freezing smaller portions but this past year I have been lazy. also getting soup and eating it at the cafe is a way to get out among people.
What I’d say we did is cut out many of what I’ll call starches or sides when eating. We have a lot of salads, or fish/meat and veggies, without the rice or potatoes we had when the kids were here. Actually it was one of the kids on break from school that started us on this - he was only eating meat and veggies (and all of the sudden he’d eat different veggies too), so we just started eating that way and continued when they went back to school.
I’m looking forward to figuring this out once my last child leaves this fall. The issue I suspect I’ll run into is that my S25 is a better eater than my spouse. The kid would be happy to eat lots of vegetables, fewer carbs, more plant or fish based meals. The husband is a Meat and a Starch, no veggies at all ever, no fish other than canned tuna person. So the way I want to eat, isn’t really what he likes to eat. I’m thinking about just saying ok, now that I don’t have to cook for a family, we’re each on our own - I want to eat what I want to eat, and it’s not what you want to eat. That feels… unkind. It also feels counter to my other empty nest goal to work on reconnecting more as partners and less as roommates (which is the habit our tired selves seem to have fallen into the last several years). So anyway, I’m actively trying to think about how i want to do food going forward, as I’m tired of cooking the way I’ve cooked for the last however long forever.
We are empty nesters with our youngest in college. We both work and DW has a new job and that is causing some extra hours. For 7 or so months we have been doing the Factor Prepared Meals. I love the portion control. Each meal is 400-650 calories. I love the convenience. Cost is not totally great. We do those meals 4 nights a week. We might cook once or twice and eat out the others.
For the most part, I cook what I would like to eat. My husband is generally fine with that, but there are times that he wants something else. On those nights, he is free to make it himself. We still eat together and have a nice meal and have a good connection, even if I’m not cooking his dinner.
What has worked well for us is we menu plan together on Saturday mornings and then go to the market. That way he has the extras that he wants and I have mine.
I also only do dinners. We are on our own for breakfast and lunch in terms of preparation, although we do try to eat together when we can.
It really isn’t. Though DH and I cook together, our plates often differ. Several years ago, I decided I needed to lose a certain amount of weight, and I was under no illusion why I had put it on in the first place. I had to divorce myself from DH’s eating habits and go back to how I used to eat when I was naturally thin. That meant a hard but kind conversation from a place of love. I explained that this was something I needed to do for myself, no judgement on him (I love all of him), but I clearly explained how I would be eating going forward. Sometimes it means we eat different things, always it means I don’t eat breakfast, and often it means he prepares a side or some other extra that I don’t eat. Except for breakfast, we always eat together, and we continue to cook and plan meals together. I met my weight goal and continue to maintain while his habits have slid a bit more to my side, but he still eats what he wants. We’ve made it work without alienating each other or giving up our love of cooking.
I wish you luck @OctoberKate as you navigate to a new, more healthy normal. Even a few small changes at first can make a difference and get you going. You don’t have to start with anything drastic. For example, without changing our first week’s meal plan, I just didn’t eat the starch and made more of the vegetable. I also added a very tasty lentil and sausage stew that was very much on my plan without making any comment about it (and not eating much of the sausage), and he loved it. Now, many recipes that aren’t meat/starch-heavy are in our rotation and those that are, I either eat around, supplement, or make something different. Finding balance without judgment is the goal. Baby steps.
I have shared how while it’s nice to be catered to (I do ALL the cooking and grilling), some meals might not be either of our “favorite” but we can both make an effort to make do.
For instance last night I made casserole that he would say is a “10” for him but for me it’s maybe a 7. I can manage with a 7 meal from time to time. And it should be vice versa! He is very much in the frame of mind that every meal should be something he really likes - or he just won’t eat it. No he’s not 6, he’s 69.
And as above sometimes I’ll say “I’m
Making so and so for dinner (something I really like) - if you don’t want that there are leftovers from earlier in the week”
