I have no idea how to feed myself.

I managed to (sort of) cook for my husband, my kid, and myself for many decades. It wasn’t good cooking, being plain. We had spaghetti once a week, for instance. I could make hamburgers and hot dogs, and a few other things. Sausage, mashed potatoes, and green beans. Meat loaf.

My husband’s whole body was messed up; he was skinny, not because he ate well, but because he couldn’t imagine eating unless (a) he was starving or (b) the food available was the exact thing he was craving right then. He had bad teeth and a terrible digestive system, and he smoked most of his life. So feeding him was a matter of figuring out what he could eat, and giving him that. We didn’t have a lot of salads. I used to try new recipes, and he wouldn’t eat them. Couldn’t eat them. Went and got himself a pastrami sandwich instead.

Now I’m on my own, and it hasn’t improved. For one thing, it’s really hard to cook for one person. That, I think, is the main reason for the recent fad of “girl dinners” with a few discrete objects on a plate. It’s not being precious, it’s being practical to have a meal of crackers, a couple of Babybel cheeses, and a cut-up apple, when everything that’s sold in the supermarket is enough to feed three people.

The book I bought that said it was about “cooking for one” got around the problem by assuming you were going to have leftovers afterwards. I don’t eat leftovers. Many years of experience have taught me that having leftovers in the fridge is a great way to create mold. Freezing them is a way to fill up your freezer compartment with anonymous rock-hard objects you’re never going to eat.

It’s partly temperamental: I don’t particularly like cooking, and I don’t like planning. I’m impatient, distracted, and impulsive, all characteristics that do not go well with laying out a week’s meals, making a grocery list, shopping, and preparing a meal.

As I age, also, I don’t have as much of an appetite. I used to buy three Italian pork sausages for my husband and myself, and we could put away a large pizza between the two of us. Now, I don’t have sausage (for instance) as often as I used to, because it’s awkward asking for half of a sausage at the meat counter. I need a quarter pound of ground turkey, not a pound. I really really don’t need a whole head of cauliflower, and I hate wasting a whole lovely head of lettuce.

Now that I’m older, my taste has also gotten simpler, and I find myself yearning for old-fashioned diner food. Eating out is an ordeal, because they always give you a vast plate or bowl filled with three dinners, or they inflate French toast into a balloon and pile half-fried potatoes on the side.

Chewing is harder. I used to love baby carrots. They just annoy me now. I used to eat a lot of apples. They just don’t interest me any more. Anything that breaks hard when you bite it seems like a lot of work.

I also don’t much like eating itself, I confess. That is, I like eating, but mostly as a way of satisfying various kinds of hunger, not as a pleasurable experience. The way I was raised, family dinner was hellish. The tension was thick between my father and my mother, and among all of us, and we all ate as fast as we could and asked to be excused.

But I have to eat. I suppose I could subscribe to one of those meal providers whose boxes I see on doorsteps in my neighborhood, but that seems expensive and wasteful; besides, friends who do that are unenthusiastic about the results.

So I have frozen single-serving Trader Joe meals a lot, or cheese-and-pickle sandwiches. I eat cereal, or oatmeal. I pour a can of Progresso chicken noodle soup into a bowl and microwave it, and sometimes have a slice of buttered toast along with it. I eat like a little old lady. It all seems so unnecessary.

I am beginning to understand why, when my husband used to pay the bills, he would say that if we just gave up buying groceries, we could make ends meet.

However, it’s Thursday, and Thursday is when my family comes over for dinner. I’m making tofu bolognese with pasta and making a salad. I am looking forward to it.

Somehow, it’s so much easier to cook for four people than it is to cook for one.