Easy Dinner Recipes for Two: The Life You're Actually Cooking For

Wed, 17 Jun 2026 08:00:00 -0500

The first time I cooked dinner for two people on purpose, just two, was a Thursday in the fall of 2002. I made roast chicken. A four-pound bird. I’d been making roast chicken for company since the late 1980s and it had always been the right thing to make, so I made it.

There were leftovers for four days.

That chicken taught me something I should have already understood: a four-pound roast chicken is a meal for four. I had spent twenty years cooking for four people. The habits I’d built in that kitchen did not simply transfer to a smaller table. The pots I reached for were the wrong size. The amounts I bought at the store were wrong. I kept making the same recipes and then standing in front of the open refrigerator wondering where I was going to put all of this.

Dinner on Sunday Evening Review

Easy Dinner Recipes for Two: The Life You're Actually Cooking For