Learning to live on your own isn’t easy, and figuring out things to eat when you don’t have your mom to cook dinner for you every night can be tough. It is easy to fall into the habit of ordering off UberEats or Skip The Dishes every single night, but that gets unhealthy and not to mention expensive. I’ve put together a list of some of the easiest meals to make when living alone for the first time:
Omelettes
Omelettes are definitely one of my go-to meals, and that’s because it’s suitable for all breakfast, lunch, and dinner! Omelettes are super easy to make because you can’t really do much wrong. To make an omelette I typically crack two eggs in a bowl, and mix in milk, salt, and pepper. I fry the mixture on the stove until it solidifies, toss the ingredients onto one side of the omelette and then flip that side over.
You can really put anything you want in an omelette, some of my favourite ingredients to use for this meal is goat cheese or cheddar cheese, green peppers, and black olives!
Wraps/ Quesadillas
I can honestly say that getting a panini press has saved my life. Okay, that’s dramatic; but since I’ve moved out, I eat more wraps in a month than I have in my last eighteen years. Wraps are always a good meal choice because once you stuff them (with foods such as vegetables, cheese, chicken etc…) you end up getting a good amount of nutrients, while still eating something delicious and super easy!
Quesadillas are pretty much made the same way as wraps, except instead of “wrapping” the ingredients, you sandwich them between two tortillas. The other major difference is that you generally cook quesadillas in the oven until they get crispy/ golden. I usually leave mine in the oven for around 10-15 minutes, or basically until it looks cooked.
Some of the must have ingredients for these meals include: Cheese, lettuce, sour cream, guacamole, chicken, and tortillas (and obviously anything else you’d enjoy).
Stuffed Peppers
Stuffed peppers are easy to make – carve out the middle of a bell pepper to turn it into the shape of a bowl. As you cook some rice, warm up the peppers in the oven for about 10 minutes. Once the rice is ready, fill the pepper with the rice and some parmesan cheese (and anything else you fancy), and toss the finished product back in the oven for about 15 minutes.
Salads
Everyone knows how to toss up a simple salad, and salads are the best side to have with a meal. Salads are fun because you can add almost anything to them to change up your dinners – corn, beets, nuts, etc.
If you’re looking to make a salad that spices things up from your regular dinners, but is still really easy to make and uses ingredients you already have, you should try quinoa salad. To make this, all you need is cooked quinoa, diced tomatoes, black olives and feta cheese. Mixing these in a small bowl and adding vinegar to the mixture makes for a great (and surprisingly filling) meal.
Different variations of these kinds of salads can be made with foods such as kidney beans or chickpeas!
Other simple meal ideas include: pasta, frozen shrimp, roasted vegetables, and all variations of potato (mashed potato, baked potato, scallop potato etc.) (no, you can never have too much potato).
