Don't know what to eat

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I've been living alone for 2 1/2 years and I never know what to eat.

I get very stressed at the supermarket and never get the right things I need. I spend half my evenings stressing about what I should eat and end up just have cereal at midnight. Or I eat tomato soup and toast every night for a month.

I looked at menu plan websites but they are all for families. I am also vegetarian.

Does anyone have advice or know of any resources?

Thanks

Why is it worth all these thoughts anyway? Suppose you don't eat something that is perfect; so the half an hour it takes to eat wouldn't be the most enjoyable; but it is only half an hour anyway, so why does it matter that much?

By the way, do you go to school or work? If so, doesn't this waste too much of your valuable time thinking of all this? If you don't do either, then perhaps your brain knows that it should do SOMETHING so it thinks about what to eat since you don't have anything else going on. In this case I strongly suggest you do start school or work. Think of it this way: if your dinner is not good, you can always make up for it later, but if your career is not good, you will never catch up for all the years you have wasted.

I'm vegetarian too. I find that eating simple foods is easy on the system

Try red lentils. All you have to do is boil them in some veggie broth. It's a good comfort food. Also, try Ezekiel bread with honey and peanut butter. I like cinnamon on it too as it makes it taste like a cinnabon but it's much healthier.

Do you like to eat the same thing all the time? I do better that way. It helps me focus better.

Pasta is very easy to make and also contains no meat and is very tasty! You can get loads of really nice veggie sauces at the supermarket to make it more interesting. Pasta is my favourite food because you can make each dish so different but with the same basic ingredient.

Making sure to have vegetables/fruit either as snacks or in meals throughout the day is very important. On diets of bread and cereal you are not going to receive the vitamins you should have. I recommend:

Apples.
Bananas.
Satsumas (small oranges).
Carrots.
Lettuce.
Onions.

Get staples like pasta, flour, etc.
Fruits
Veggies
Nuts/Beans (you need protein)
"junk food"
Macaroni & Cheese
Frozen meals (if you can find any you like/want)
Also, keep broth (I don't know what kinds vegetarians use ) on hand as a good stock/staple item.
I'd be more specific, but I don't know what you like

It sounds like part of your problem is making a decision. Which reminds me of something I read. That people who have lost their emotions due to brain injury can't make decisions. They logic everything out and can't get to the point of, okay, this is what I'm gonna do, or the answer, or whatever. We on the spectrum do have emotions, of course, but we do also have a tendency to use logical thinking. I wonder if that is getting in the way of just making a decision on what to eat and doing it.

I don't mean that to be a complete answer. And it doesn't cover what to do about it, I realize. But I figure it's worth throwing out there for your consideration.

I usually cook as if I were a family of 4 (I'm alone, like you), then put the remainder in the freezer (or in the fridge if it doesn't spoil quickly). That way I spare myself the task of having to cook every day, while still eating relatively healthy food. It sure beats microwaving every day.

Once when I was a little kid, I freaked out in the supermarket because I couldn't decide what cereal to buy. I used to read all the ingredients of everything and it took me so long to read all the ingredients on the boxes that I just sort of went into a stupor and couldn't move. Some guy walked by and said, "Just pick one, it's just cereal."

I was so embarrassed but I couldn't move. I don't do that anymore. Maybe you will outgrow this too.

Thanks for the feedback and advice.

If you don't already have one, you could get a freezer and a bunch of those plastic chinese take out containers, make meals to serve more people then freeze most of it. Then you don't always have to cook. Overtime you could build up a bit of a variety and have half a dozen recipes or more that you like made up and ready to go.

As the respondents above said, a freezer and some boxes will go a long way towards helping you plan meals. An evening's cooking can easily provide a weeks worth, 2 or 3 evenings and you've got a nice little selection of home made ready meals. I can sympathise with your feelings about supermarkets, I find them quite uncomfortable and disorientating too. Most of them do home delivery though, and sitting down once every week or fortnight and ordering in all your non perishables can be a cost effective way to avoid visiting them. These home delivery services often aren't that great for fresh produce though, so personally I'd either nip into a little grocers on my way home from work or buy frozen stuff. Nutritionally speaking, frozen fruit and veg is as good as or even better than fresh, especially if it's a type that deteriorates fast after picking such as peas or sweetcorn.

As for cooking, have you seen http://www.recipezaar.com/ ? There are over 397 000 recipes to search through, but feature I find most useful is the recipe sifter tool ( http://www.recipezaar.com/sifter.php ). You can use it to find out what you can make from what you've got, or look specifically for, say, recipes which are vegetarian AND simple to make AND cheap (9706 recipes!).

Good luck!

It's easy to buy the same foods and eat the same thing all the time.

I have a hard time making simple decisions, and figuring out what to eat definitely falls into that category.

I have a similar problem, but using cookbooks helps me a lot. This is a good one:

http://www.amazon.com/Vegetarian-5-Ingr ... 076790690X