One of the nice things about being single is the freedom to have meals at weird times, and to have single-ingredient meals if that's what you want. No one's going to mind! But it gets a little complicated when interacting with people who schedule potlucks, for example. I remember a church potluck dinner where the instructions regarding how much and what to bring were: "enough for yourself and one other person, and bring whatever you'd normally have for Sunday supper." Well, at my place those days, Sunday supper was usually a bowl of popcorn. No, I didn't. I think I went for fast-food chicken.

Same dinner: a family of four made sure to follow the instruction: they brought five cupcakes for dessert.

Although I'm a fairly decent cook, what I usually feel about meal preparation is that I'd rather be the person playing piano while someone else cooks. A cousin of mine takes that one step further: she'd rather be the person listening to the pianist while a third person cooks.

My mother was a good cook, but never cared much for cakes and cookies and other baked desserts. She rarely made them. So once when she for some reason had to bake brownies, I got a phone call asking for help. I could tell she was having a bad day with the whole thing when I realized what she needed help with was following the directions on the package of brownie mix. She enjoyed telling this story on herself, by the way.