One is the Loneliest Number

Broken hearts and break-ups take the wind from your sails, the serotonin from your brain and the voluminosity from your heart, and on top of all that, they completely muck up your diet. After you've gotten over the obligatory loss of appetite stage your left feeling less than enthused, not only by the thought of food, but by the actual process of acquiring it and cooking it.

Cooking for one is a lonely endeavour. Cooking is the joy of the lovers, partners, couples, also known now as the mortal enemy. Glued to one another, kissing and clasping the stirring spoon together, feeding eachother baby tomatoes and 'accidentally' getting sauce places where they have to lick it off. 

Now you are a heartbroken one, singular. S.I.N.G.L.E, and you've been relegated to the ready-meal for one section, the supermarket equivalent of the self help isle in a library.

Fish pie; 'Ten Ways To Mend Your Broken Heart', Spaghetti Carbonara; 'Coming To Terms With The Fact That You're Going To Die Alone And Get Eaten By Your Cats.'  
You loiter near by, browsing the titles from a distance, then swoop in like an eagle and grab that Cottage Pie; 'How To Survive The Loss Of Love', and get the hell out of there like it never happened. And then to the self service you go, because a machine can't smell your loneliness, a machine won't look at you with pitying eyes, like you're a baby hedgehog, a lonely baby hedgehog. Baby hedgehog eyes are everywhere these days, and you don't need it.

Ready-meal for one and a bottle of wine, bag it, sigh through your nose, eyes down, frump out the automatic doors, passed the meal-for-two section that you used to peruse with your partner. Ahh yes! Back when you were a two, now you are a one and you are living on a diet of fish fingers with whirlpools of ketchup, chicken dippers with whirlpools of ketchup and those damn ready-meals for one often with whirlpools of ketchup. But at least you haven't reached as low as a green pot noodle yet or meat from a tin, that will be the nadir. 

You were so adventurous in a couple, whole new culinary experiences lay out before you, and you forged forward like an intrepid food warrior. You were one of those people who had homemade stock in their freezer and always, always a full fat fridge, packed with healthy nutritious foods, like delicatessen pate, asparagus and fancy smelly cheeses. 

You bought herbs, you actually gathered up a collection of those little bottled herbs, you had so many you had to actually buy a herb rack to put them all in, now they lie dormant, disappointed, un-used. You bought fancy baking trays, expensive pots, coloured spatulas, a slow-cooker, a bread-maker, an egg-poacher and cook books. Piles and piles of big fat cook books; Delia, Jamie, Nigella, Hugh, Nigel, Heston, Ottolenghi, even Gordan Bloody Ramsey, a different meal for every night of the week, made with love. The new shiny things lay strewn around, rendered obsolete by the loss of the love that has vanished. 
That bloody egg-poacher with its 4 half-circular egg holes sits in a crepuscular corner, mocking you, teasing the idea of your lonely egg, "one poached egg for the loser", it whispers. You're done with poached eggs.

All you need now is a microwave, you have become a culinary recluse. Once a lionhearted explorer and experimenter in the kitchen, you are now a professional micro-waver and griller of chicken dippers. You have gone from metaphorically climbing Mount Everest with your cooking, to quite literally walking to Tesco and swooping for meals-for-one like a big lonely eagle.

But as those annoying people say (usually members of happy couples), "time heals all wounds". They are right. Soon your culinary inquisitiveness will start to come back. Your heart will mend. And you'll crack out the slow-cooker and the bread-maker and the egg-poacher, and you'll cook, you'll cook with the ferocity of Marco Pierre White and the gentle passion of Rick Stein. There'll be no more eagle swooping in Tesco. You'll even start using the herbs again, except Fenugreek, that was an impulse buy in the throws of passion one day in Waitrose, back when you were in love. But fear not intrepid food warrior, there will once again come a day when you will buy some redundant herb, besottedly fumbling down some lovestruck isle of an otherwise dreary supermarket. 
Just you wait and see.