Here’s the Most Depressing Single-Person Meal I Ever Made. What’s Yours?

I had just broken up with someone, and I had this townhouse in Laporte.  In it was nothing but my clothes, a torn up love seat, my TV... and a deer steak a hunter friend of mine had given me.  Having come home after the bars closed, broke, and in no shape at all to go after any food, I did something I'd never done before:  I attempted to cook a steak in a frying pan - an unforgivable sin, being someone with a background as a cook, specializing in mouth-watering steaks you'll talk about for years.  I'd never been told about how you have to "cure" deer meat to get rid of the wild, gamey flavor.  Between that and the fact I basically ruined it anyway on the stove top, let's just say I opted to go to bed without eating.  Even with a killer case of the munchies, I just couldn't do that.

My second-most "single-guy meal" is actually something we still do in our family.  I call it "You Bet."  It stems from the times I had a little of this / little of that left in my kitchen, and in whatever creative way, I would mix that all up into something that resembled a meal, or at least gave the desired end effect.  A good 15 years later, my kids love You Bet, because being in a bigger hurry nowadays, we just line up everything on the counter and let everybody take what they want - so it's more of a buffet.  It's called You Bet, because you can look at anything in the kitchen and ask the question "Does this go in it?", to which the answer is consistently "You bet."

My wife, on the other hand, was one to make an entire Thanksgiving dinner when it was just her and her dog.  Man, I love her.  How could I turn down a heart like that?  For our first Super Bowl - an event neither of us genuinely cares about other than it's an excuse to celebrate - in our tiny apartment, after we'd just moved to Vermont, she made a giant food spread as if we were having 30 people over.  And she still does.

So, I've stepped up my end of the home cooking game just a touch.

Right now, guys on Reddit are talking about the most depressing "single man" meals they've ever made.  Just an excerpt:

I was too lazy to do dishes so I took a handful of cereal, put it in my mouth, then chugged milk.  Ate the whole new box of cereal in one sitting.

A can of cold ravioli with a half a bag of very stale Doritos and flat Coke.

I opened a can of baked beans, heated it up directly on the burner, then put on a glove and ate it out of the can.

I drank six oatmeal stouts and called it dinner.  I decided that if it has the calorie count of a meal, it's a meal.

A bowl of instant oatmeal and a tilapia filet from the back of the freezer.  Mixed together with no seasonings.  Just fish and oatmeal.

Plain white rice with Italian salad dressing poured over it.

Just a bag of raw spinach, seasoned every few bites with a couple shakes of salt and pepper.

Made a Bloody Mary with vodka and SpaghettiOs.

Just gotta say:

• The bean guy was an overachiever.  They're good cold!
• The 'all my calories from beer' dude... I wouldn't want to admit how many times I've made that error... and oftentimes paid dearly for it.
• And, white rice is still an acceptable snack, but we just mix in soy sauce and pray the salt doesn't start oozing out of our pores.  (Big deal!)