A Feast Fit For A Plus-None: What To Eat And Enjoy As A Single Person This Valentine’s Day

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Valentine’s Day when you’re single is undeniably shit. Everywhere you look someone is feeding someone else something delicious in this horribly intimate fashion that makes you feel like some sort of voyeuristic pervert, even though you were there first, just trying to enjoy your sandwich.

You’re a pariah, you don’t belong outside, and you just want to run home to your meal for-two-forone. See, single people dining out on 14th February is like eating all the free samples in a supermarket: not illegal, but definitely frowned upon. Couples don’t like it when us single folk start slow clapping during their wedding proposal. It makes them uneasy. The only place you’re welcomed with open, limp arms are the bleak, Beyonce laden cry fests known as Single’s Discos. With their neverending supply of Steak McCoys and tequila, events for singles on V-Day serve no other purpose than to make you feel bad about being alone, together; a place where the people are the only thing more bitter than the lemon that accompanies your shot.

Bad food and strong booze on Valentines Day shouldn’t be synonymous with single life. You think George Clooney survived on a diet of Mr Porky and Jägerbombs before he became Mr Alamuddin? Of course he didn’t, he dined on hot actresses and Nespresso every day. Clooney didn’t put up with that shit, and neither should you. Your tastebuds deserve more. Here are some foods that’ll make you lone wolves feel fucking stellar this Valentine’s Day:

1. Messy Food

As a woman who enjoys her food, nothing is more painful than watching my fellow female, quite obviously in a new relationship, indulging in a romantic meal but trying hard to maintain an illusion of healthy eating, clean living, and sexual prowess, like she don’t take a shit every day. Well I got news for you, sister: everybody poops, and everybody dies, so you might as well order the bolognese that you actually wanted, instead of the house salad with the dressing on the side. ‘Cause girl, there is no way to make lettuce look sexy. Just let that spaghetti whip Ragù sauce across your cheeks and into your pretty little eyes, because you can’t hide who you are forever.

Single ladies, you are currently the envy of every girl who’s chowing down on bare Romaine right now. You haven’t got to try and squeeze yourself into a basque later like a hungry masochist. They’re totally green eyed that you get to slob around in your underwear with a gigantic burger in one hand and a bottle of merlot in the other. There may well be relish sitting undetected in your hair and red wine staining your teeth, but at least you don’t have to fast in order to fit into a tight pair of panties that will inevitably bring on a yeast infection at a later date.

2. Sexy Food

There’s nothing that diminishes a libido quite like watching another couple’s attempt to reboot their relationship into sexual overdrive with a chocolate fountain that’s erupting in ways no longer possible in their own bedroom. The loss of lust couldn’t be more obvious if they were on their hands and knees, searching for it like a pair of mislaid glasses.

Rubbing strawberries around each other’s open mouths as if trying to fit a square peg into a round hole seems like it would be one of the less sexually charged activities of the evening. Especially if it’s executed with that manic look found in the eyes of couples everywhere; like sex on a weeknight is some mad experiment and this attempt at getting your passion to last until you get home “is gonna work, I tells ya!”

Yeah, sexy foods are better when you’re single. There’s no expectations, no pressure, just a bunch of tasty aphrodisiacs to fuel a long and fruitful masturbation session. Luckily Valentine’s day is on a Saturday this year, so you can enter your bedroom on the Friday with your foraged treats like it’s a dirty picnic for one in the garden of Eden. Eat that fucking apple. Get weird with yourself. And then emerge from that dark, sexual fantasia on Sunday evening, weak and soiled like a freshly birthed lamb but ultimately changed: physically, spiritually and emotionally.

3. Expensive Food

Now that you don’t have to splash out on mediocre dinner and drinks for two, why not just put all that cash together and treat yourself to a ridiculously expensive meal? Plus dinner etiquette can fuck off, because there’s no one there to insist that you wear the lobster bib or be mortified when you ask for straws instead of flutes for the Moet.

4. Smelly Food

Hey guys, y’know when you’re just dying to order a fuckload of garlic bread and shove it all into your gob in one fell swoop because it’s just so fucking delicious? I hear ya. But normally you stop yourself, right? Because in a couple of hours you’d be indulging in smokin’ hot missionary sex with your girl, face to face, mouth to mouth, and you’re not sure how long you can hold your festering garlicky breath for. I feel your pain. But son, you ain’t gettin’ laid tonight, so you don’t have to give a fuck! Eat that bulb like an apple!

Consume those little cloves like insidious mint imperials if you must! In fact, why not wash it down with a strong coffee, maybe some pungent cheeses and leave that mixture to putrefy in your fetid gob overnight? BECAUSE YOU CAN. And that, my friend, is more rewarding than any blow job.

5. Cliché Food

Nobody wants to be a cliche, and the consumption of certain foods on Valentine’s Day is inevitably going to make you feel like one. But just because a 16-year-old cashier is making sad eyes at you because the amount of chocolate and wine you’re buying looks like the (poor) diet of a lonely and depressed single, that doesn’t mean you are one! !

For starters, chocolate has this notorious reputation as a sad-gal snack for a Jonesian (of the Bridget variety) generation needing to metaphorically fill two holes: the one in her heart where love should be and one between her legs where a dick should be. But, what people don’t know, is that some women eat chocolate because it tastes really fucking good. We don’t treat it as a weird consolation prize for being single. Believe it or not, some of us just aren’t that fussed about being a plus-none.

To many of us, single life is a rare pleasure and we should treat it as such. Because before you know it you’ll be in a relationship, handcuffed to another person’s emotional radiator. You’ll use terse phrases like “love is hard work” and “relationships are complicated.” Oysters and champagne will become tragically synonymous with trying to recapture the amorous fucking from your freshman year as a couple, which has slowly given way to meandering through the occasional humdrum trip to Pound Town. Enjoy eating as a party of one whilst you can – once a relationship beckons you’ll be splitting deserts because you two are just so fucking cute it makes me sick. And I’ll tell you this for free: half a slice of fudge cake, is never enough fudge cake.