Cooking can be creative and satisfying. This list provides resources to make it simple: easy recipes for one, two, or more, and a link to a spice/herb website. At the very end there are templates for grocery shopping.
Below are links to well-known websites that offer generally quick and easy recipes, taking anywhere from 15 to 40 minutes to prepare. Some of these recipes are for a family, so if you’re single or cooking for two, you can cut the recipe in half (and enjoy the leftovers) — or create the whole thing, then freeze single portions for future meals.
NOTE: All of these websites have many ads (above, below, and to the right, of the main text)
— so keep scrolling down to find the full recipe. Most allow you to print the recipe.
All Recipes — Quick and Easy Dinners for One. This website has literally hundreds of easy recipes for one person, and they focus on contemporary, fresh ingredients.
All Recipes/Easy Cooking for One
Betty Crocker Easy Recipes — This website is clearly laid out and easy to browse through. It features simple and dependable recipes. Many are for a family, so either split the recipe in half or cook the whole thing and freeze it in meal-sized portions
Betty Crocker/Easy Recipes
Delicious — A selection of 30 “dinner for one” recipes with an international accent. Many of the recipes combine ingredients in unusual and creative ways. The recipes on this site use grams instead of pounds, so here’s an online converter.
Delicious/Dinners for One
Pure Wow — 31 Easy Dinners for One. This part of the website features easy and light entrees for one and many of the entrees have novel ways to include vegetables.
PureWow / Easy and Light
PureWow / 35 Hearty Vegetarian Meals (multiple servings)
Food Network — 30-Minute Meals. These meals are little more complicated (and will probably take longer than 30 minutes), but they feature interesting ingredients and combinations.
Foodnetwork.com: 30-Minute Meals
Taste of Home — This popular website focuses on recipes that are practical because they’re from home cooks (not gourmet chefs) and that feature familiar ingredients and step-by-step instructions. It has an especially robust collection of easy-to-use meal plans, so we’ve listed several that should be helpful.
Taste of Home: Monthly Meal Plan for Two
Taste of Home: Meals for Every Weeknight of a Year
Taste of Home: Easy Freezer Meal Recipes
Spice Advice — This website provides a detailed look at herbs and spices for more flavorful meals. The site lists all the well-known spices and herbs, explains where they’re from, traditional uses, and ideas for how to use them to bring some spark to your cooking.
spiceadvice.com
Provided below are several downloadable and printable documents that can be used as templates. Some of these have suggested lists of groceries or meal plans and some are blank for you to fill in.
vertex42.com/Grocery-Checklist.pdf
ziplist.com/grocery-list.pdf
justagirlandherblog.pdf
thewalletmoth.com/Fill-InList.pdf