Recipe: Salad Bar Stew for One and Article: Easy Cooking For One

EASY COOKING FOR ONE

Life these days often means eating alone. Even if you are not single, the demands of business and our varied personal interests frequently mean that a spouse is away on a business trip and other family members are out at different activities during mealtime.

Unfortunately, when dining solo, eating vegetables often goes by the board because convenient dinners for one, like a pizza, burrito, or heat-and-eat frozen entrees, rarely include enough veggies to help you meet AICR's dietary recommendation of 5 servings a day of fruits and vegetables.

This is when stopping at a salad bar is a deliciously healthy idea for picking up more than a cold meal. At many salad bars, you can assemble the ingredients to make a fresh-flavored, virtually fat-free, hot dinner for one. A mere 20 minutes after getting them home, you can sit down to a satisfying stew of home-cooked vegetables, beans and pasta.

Using the salad bar as your source of ingredients for this "single stew" offers several advantages over buying loose produce or picking up packages of already prepped vegetables and canned beans. At a salad bar, you can take only as much as you need for one serving. Despite its high cost per pound, the salad bar will cost far less than the many individual packages of veggies needed to match the same variety - which then result in leftovers that later sit in the refrigerator and spoil.

And you have plenty of choices. Whether you prefer broccoli to cauliflower, zucchini to spinach, or black beans to chickpeas, you'll find most salad bars offer them, and more. Once you have tried this recipe, which makes a thick, Italian-style minestrone studded with flavorful croutons, you will probably get creative at putting together other combinations with different ethnic accents - perhaps for an Asian or Mexican stew. Non-vegetarians can add cooked chicken, often available at salad bars, or other ingredients now sold in single-portion packages.

SALAD BAR STEW FOR ONE

1 cup chicken or vegetable broth
1/2 small onion, chopped
1 small new potato, about 4 ounces, cut in 1-inch pieces
1/2 cup raw or steamed carrots, cut in 1/2-inch pieces
1/4 cup macaroni or other small pasta, about 3/4 ounce
1/2 cup raw or steamed cauliflower, cut in small pieces
1/2 cup cooked or canned chickpeas or kidney beans
1 cup spinach leaves
12 seasoned croutons
Salt and freshly ground pepper

Pour the broth into a saucepan. Add the onion, potato and carrots. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat, and simmer 5 minutes.

Add the pasta and cook 5 minutes. Add the cauliflower, beans and spinach. Cook until the pasta and potatoes are done.

Place the croutons in a shallow, wide bowl. Pour the stew over the croutons. Mix and serve.

VARIATIONS:
If desired, sprinkle with some grated Parmesan cheese or drizzle with a teaspoon of extra virgin olive oil. If you wish, you can mix in leftover cooked chicken. Cooked rice can be used in place of the pasta, the potato, or both.

This stew contains 381 calories and 4 grams of fat
Source: Dana Jacobi for the American Institute