The person making one portion deserves food chosen with the same care as a family meal.

Cooking for one often gets demoted to refueling, as though care at the table requires an audience. The reasoning is quiet and rarely examined: effort for others is love, effort for yourself is fuss. That leaves a person eating standing up for years while telling themselves it hardly matters. It does matter, in the ordinary way that anything happening daily matters.

This week, make yourself one meal you would happily set in front of someone you love. Use the good plate, sit down, and give it the twenty minutes it would have been given if company were coming.