Cooking alone can feel like walking into a silent church. The clatter of pans replaces the sound of conversation, and the aroma of garlic hitting hot oil becomes its own kind of prayer. For me, that silence has always been complicated.
As a professionally trained chef, food is my love language and one of my creative outlets. I’ve spent years developing recipes that feed tables full of people, plating food for others to photograph, taste, and share. However, somewhere along the way, I forgot how to cook just for myself.
It’s a strange paradox. I can execute a ten-course tasting menu without blinking, but the thought of sitting down to dinner alone sometimes makes me lose my appetite.
The Myth of Cooking for One
Like most culinary students, I started out with recipes designed for scale. Everything was multiplied; servings for six, twelve, or a hundred. The assumption was that food is always communal, that every dish is meant to be shared.
That’s how my hundreds of recipe cards still read. Chicken enchiladas for six. Split pea soup for eight. Chocolate chip cookies, three dozen. Even when I write my own recipes, I tend to default to abundance, as if a smaller portion would make the experience less real.
Maybe it’s habit, or maybe it’s the lingering belief that food only matters when it’s seen, tasted, or approved by others. For a long time, I treated solo meals as a kind of culinary rehearsal, not the main performance.
But over the past few months, that perspective has started to shift.
Aisles, Autumn, and Appetite
The change began with something small: Earlier this week, I decided to step away from my keto diet and reintroduce carbs. Not in a crash-and-burn way, but gently, with more balance and less restriction. It was a mental reset as much as a dietary one.
So, yesterday afternoon, I grabbed my tote bag and walked through the grocery store by myself. I wasn’t shopping for anyone else, no dinner guests to impress, no tasting menu to plan. Just me.
I drifted through the aisles without a list, choosing ingredients that made me feel comforted: eggs, carrots, onions, a fat bunch of parsley, and a package of naan bread. Fall and winter always bring me back to soups and stews. These meals are slow and forgiving, rewarding patience.
And then there was my sweet tooth. It announced itself halfway down the baking aisle, where the chocolate chips were waiting. I hesitated, then smiled.
Cookies.
My favorite chocolate chip cookies, in fact. The ones that bake soft and chewy, the kind that make the whole kitchen smell like nostalgia. I know the recipe by heart: three dozen cookies, minimum. More than I will allow myself to eat on my own.
But I bought the ingredients anyway.
Baking for the Body and the Heart
As soon as I got home and unloaded the groceries, I creamed the butter and sugar together while my favorite 80s music filled the apartment. I stirred in the eggs, the vanilla, and the flour. When the dough came together, I tasted it on instinct, still warm from my hands, familiar and perfect.
As the cookies baked, I thought about how often I deny myself sweetness when I’m training and alone. Not just desserts, but sweetness in general, gentleness, patience, and the small kindness of asking, “What do I want tonight?”
When the timer beeped, I pulled the trays out of the oven and grabbed one cookie. I didn’t wait for it to cool. It burned my fingers a little, but it was worth it. The chocolate melted across my tongue, and for that brief moment, everything was right with the world.
That one cookie hit the spot.
The rest were separated into two batches. I made one batch for my next-door neighbors, who have unintentionally become taste-testers for my creations, and another for a friend who is currently out of town for work. She and her husband will receive them when she returns. An edible “welcome home.”
By the time I sealed the second Ziploc, I realized what I’d actually done: I’d cooked for myself first. Not out of obligation, but intentionally.
Sharing Without Needing to Be Seen
Cooking for others has always been my default way of connecting. It’s how I show love. But this time, the act of baking wasn’t about performance or validation. It was about participation, about being part of something even in solitude.
When I drop off food at my neighbor’s door, I don’t wait around for thanks. I just leave it there with a note or a smiley face on the container. Same for my friend. The joy isn’t in being praised; it’s in knowing that the comfort I created will ripple outward.
Cooking alone doesn’t have to mean eating alone. Sometimes it means creating something that travels beyond you, a quiet reminder that nourishment can be both private and shared.
That small truth hit me harder than I expected.
The Loneliness Hidden in Leftovers
For many of us, especially trans people living alone, mealtimes can feel like mirrors. You sit down at a table with one plate, and the silence starts to echo. The empty chair next to you becomes a reminder of who isn’t there.
It’s easy to slip into the habit of skipping meals, eating standing up, or defaulting to grabbing something to go while on the way home from work. The ritual of cooking can start to feel pointless without an audience.
But I’ve learned that loneliness doesn’t come from being alone; it comes from forgetting that you’re worthy of your own care.
Every time I plate a meal just for me, I’m resisting that forgetting. I set a napkin down and, on rare occasions, light a candle. I eat with real utensils. It’s not about pretending someone else is joining me; it’s about honoring that I’m already enough company for this moment.
Soup for the Soul (and the Freezer)
After baking the cookies yesterday, today I will fall back to some of my favorite fall recipes. Split pea soup, beef stew, shells and cheese, and chicken enchiladas.
I will cook them all in my usual quantities, big batches meant to feed a crowd, but instead of scaling down, I plan to start freezing the leftovers.
There is something comforting in that simple act. Each frozen container will become a promise to myself: future comfort, already prepared.
Cooking in bulk doesn’t have to mean waste; it can mean foresight. It’s proof that we believe there will be a future version of us who deserves warmth, nourishment, and ease.
And that’s a radical kind of self-care.
The Quiet Lessons of a Single Spoon
Cooking for one forces you to notice the small things: how the onions sigh when they hit butter, how the steam curls around your wrist, and how the silence of your kitchen is not emptiness but space.
There’s beauty in that intimacy. It’s where creativity thrives. It’s also where healing sneaks in through the cracks.
I’ve started to think of solo meals as conversations with myself. They’re not always joyful. Sometimes I cry while chopping vegetables. Occasionally I eat a sandwich over the counter and call it dinner. But even then, I’m choosing presence over avoidance.
And sometimes, that’s enough.
Feeding the Parts That Still Need Love
Food has always been emotional. It ties us to memory, family, and identity. For transgender folks especially, it can be a powerful way to reclaim connection with our bodies, on our own terms.
Cooking is tactile, sensory, and embodied. It reminds us that we exist beyond dysphoria, beyond how others perceive us. It gives us agency over how we nourish ourselves.
When I stir a pot of stew, I’m not just feeding my stomach. I’m feeding the younger version of me who was afraid to take up space, the one who felt like a guest at her own table.
Every spoonful becomes a small act of healing.
The Generosity of Staying Fed
Cooking alone has also reminded me that generosity starts with ourselves. When we feed ourselves well, we create overflow, the kind of abundance that spills into our friendships, our work, and our community.
That’s how the cookies happened. That’s how the soups will happen. The act of feeding myself with care naturally extends outward, not because I have to, but because I want to.
It’s the same energy that sustains mutual aid, work potlucks, and chosen family dinners everywhere. The belief that everyone, including you, deserves to eat something made with love.
Relearning the Ritual
Now, when I cook for myself, I try to make it a ritual again. I play music. I pour a glass of wine or crack open a beer. I set a place at the table even if it’s just one plate.
Sometimes I’ll even write down notes on my old recipe cards about what I liked, what I’d change, and what it made me feel. Those notes become my private dialogue, my emotional mise en place.
I’ve stopped thinking of cooking for one as lonely. It’s an invitation. A practice in presence. A reminder that I’m still here, still creating, still worth feeding.
What Solitary Meals Teach Us
When we learn to dine alone, we also learn to stop apologizing for our own hunger.
We start realizing that our worth isn’t determined by how many people are sitting across from us, but by how deeply we show up for ourselves.
Solitary meals teach us patience. They teach us boundaries. They remind us that we don’t have to wait for permission to experience pleasure or comfort.
And if we’re lucky, they teach us that love doesn’t always have to arrive from somewhere else; it can come from the steady rhythm of our own hands, stirring the pot.
The Bottom Line
There are still cookies sitting on my counter, waiting for my friend to return. I may eat one when I make my second coffee after finishing this article this morning. They taste like home, like softness, like the world slowing down just enough for gratitude to catch up.
Cooking alone no longer feels like a void to fill. It feels like a language I finally understand.
For now, the only person at the table is me, with my cat watching from across the room. and that’s enough. Because in every bite, every quiet meal, and every batch of cookies shared with friends, I find proof that I’m still connected.
Not just to others, but to myself.
