Bachelor Dinner

The other day I was out with my honey and a friend of ours, and the topic of bachelor dinners came up. That's the generic term I use for when you're flying solo for dinner, which hardly ever happens to me anymore. My honey and I, we eat dinner together almost every night. We like it. It's nice, and it works well for us. It works especially well for me because first, I'm a control freak and like to be in charge of what we're eating most nights, and second, since most of the time I do the cooking, that means I hardly ever have to do the dishes! So for these reasons, and also because I love to cook, most of the time we eat at home, together. And if on a certain night we find ourselves feeling unmotivated or just plain out of stuff to cook, we just go out and grab something, and more often than not that something ends up being tacos or a burrito, or sometimes pizza.

But back in the olden days, I almost always kept a frozen pizza in the freezer, a box of mac & cheese in the cupboard, and microwave popcorn for when I couldn't even be bothered to turn on the oven or boil water. Or sometimes I just ate oatmeal, or bread and cheese. I must admit that occasionally, I kind of miss those days. Don't get me wrong - I was endlessly lonely and some might even say bitter! I wouldn't trade what I've got now for anything, especially not those days! But sometimes I miss flying solo, just going with the impulse to do whatever I feel inspired to do in the moment without giving any thought to what anyone else might want or need. Earlier this week, I had of one of those nights. I got home from a long day at work followed by an intense yoga class that made me feel like my legs were going to separate from my body. Alas, there was no mac & cheese or frozen pizza to be found and I just didn't have the energy to leave the house again. But there was a can of black beans which soon became refried beans, and corn tortillas in the freezer, and zucchini in the fridge that took me as long to steam as it took to defrost a tortilla in the toaster oven, open the beans and throw them in the pan with some shallots, garlic and spices, and soon enough, there were tacos. Within about ten minutes I had a bachelor dinner that was significantly better than the mac & cheese or frozen pizza would have been anyway!

But guess what? I'm on my own this weekend while my rock star boyfriend jets off to play music in NYC. Me, I'm planning to lock myself in the house for most of the weekend and try to write as much music as possible in the hopes of finally breaking through the longest period of writer's block I've ever experienced. And just in case I get hungry and don't feel like cooking, yesterday I bought a frozen pizza, and I'm not ashamed to say that I can't wait to pop that baby in the oven, and maybe even eat it standing up!