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Comment by cortesoft | Hacker News Reader

If you live alone, I don’t know if I want to eat 8 hamburgers before those ingredients go bad.

no one forces you to consume 8 frozen patties at once. Especially since they already are frozen, why not keep them in that state until you crave burgers next time?

Ok, that is the meat… but what about the buns, the lettuce, tomato, etc?

Having a house with two small eaters we pretty much had to give up all fresh produce that we weren’t going to consume or preserve immediately because it goes bad too fast and isn’t worth the waste.

There’s something to be said for the economics of moving enough volume to enable eating fresh.

Buns can be frozen pretty easily. And regarding the fresh ingredients ... why not just buy a single medium sized tomato and consume just that one? Or buy a big lettuce (which usually isn't very expensive) and make a salad as a side dish?! (honest question: have you ever prepped food before?)

Yes, I buy and cook all the food for my family of four. However, I remember there were a lot of food items that I could never really make work for myself when I lived alone because I could never eat it fast enough to get through it before it went bad.

It is a lot easier now that I have four people to feed, although the issue now is more that our two kids are insanely picky eaters and it is so hard to find meals everyone can eat.

What you describe in your first paragraph is something I hear very often from people that always eat out and don't want to learn how to cook their own food, because for them it's not worth it, due to the reasons you mentioned. I'm really curious, what are the items that you couldn't make work living by yourself? I personally cannot remember many of these instances back when I cooked just for myself. Most of the food items I had could be frozen or turned into a dish that in the end could be frozen well.

The big reason I almost never eat bread at home is because I'd either have to throw out most of it or freeze it. Of course, I will freeze it to avoid wasting it but frozen bread is really inconvenient and the taste and texture are unappealing and it really needs to be toasted to be edible but it still tastes off.

So I end up just not buying bread for the house.

Maybe we're talking about different kinds of bread (I'm from Germany), but freezing bread here is really common (almost all the old people do that who live alone) and bread is one of the foods that freeze really well. It's similar to freezing rice, after thawing it's almost as good as fresh. (without toasting it or so, just plain bread)

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