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.

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)