Cooking for One (+Recipe!)

For the past few years, I've had very little motivation to cook nice dinners for myself.  Days spending eight, nine or ten hours studying or working left me unable to summon the energy to cook a meal "just for one".  Add to that that I've spent the last couple of years working in close proximity to a mall food court and my dinner favourites have gradually degenerated from colourful stir fries and rich roast dinners into alternating takeaways with lazy ten minute "meals" like macaroni cheese and tomatoes on toast.

Lately that has changed.  Making a real effort to eat healthier food has meant putting a bit of planning into my dinners, and while I can't always rally the energy to cook after a long day, rediscovering what it means to "cook for one" has been a total revelation.  As I've said before, growing up we were encouraged to eat a variety of foods but traditional meals always won out.  Winters were special for roast meals with pork crackling and crunchy roast potatoes as well as cakes and scones and home made bread with real butter.  Of course, these were treat foods and like anyone, my family does make an effort to eat healthily but I can't honestly say they're huge fans of brown rice, tofu and quinoa!
Cooking just for myself means I can take these not-so-well-loved but healthy ingredients and experiment with them without having to disappoint anyone with an inedible meal if things don't pan out (excuse the pun!).

And I'm glad I have been able to experiment because I was playing around with the usual suspects (brown rice, tofu, chia seeds...) and I managed to cook up a really yummy, colourful and healthy dish for dinner the other night.  I actually really like using tofu, it's like a little flavour sponge.  In this recipe the tofu is marinated in citrus and ginger which gives a yummy pop of flavour that really complements the beetroot.