An obvious advantage of suddenly living alone is a significant reduction in grocery costs. That's not a bad thing considering how the prices of everything are going up nowadays.

In my case, I managed to reduce my grocery trips, from weekly to fortnightly. That's instantly half, at least in theory.

I have been buying different things, too. I can now buy things I wouldn't have bought otherwise because she wouldn't eat it. Fish, for example. Or chicken thighs. Sure, I bought them before, but I never cooked with them exclusively. Now, I can. Juicy chicken karaage is in my immediate plans.

I have been spending a lot of time doing meal planning. Not so much for health, but to figure out what I'm buying in my fewer grocery trips. Sure, there is one right next to my building, but who likes going out to buy just a few things? Bonkey doesn't. He'll bite my ankles a couple of times first before letting me out the door.

Sure, I have been planning meals for the past - almost three years now, wow. But now, I'm buying less processed foods. I've been living alone for ten weeks now and I finally got through the pack of chicken nuggets in the freezer. That used to be a staple, for those days when you're too tired or lazy to cook, but now I find myself with more leftovers that I can just reheat a viand from a few days ago (as long as it's not spoiled) and have it for lunch or dinner.

Yes, I am living alone now, but I haven't bothered with changing my portions to accommodate. Buy the same amount of things, but have them for longer. Honestly, it's no fun cooking for one, unless you're just frying things. Honestly, though, that's a waste of energy, and you're better off cooking a big-ish batch of something as much as possible. I still use almost half a kilo of meat for my sinigang, but as it's perfectly freezable I end up having it for two weeks. (Not two weeks straight, mind you.)

The challenge, really, is buying vegetables. If I want leafy greens, I'll have to cook them as soon as possible. But there are times when the leftovers accumulate and I end up with wilted vegetables. It's a shame to throw food away, but sometimes you have no choice. Damn Christmas party season. But then, that's what the grocery next door is for... if only they had a good selection of vegetables, which, as I've written here before, is a tough call.

I've also been buying less snacks. I find that I can buy three big bags of chips and make them last for two weeks. It used to be that there's one basket for snacks - cookies, breads, chips - and another for noodles. Now I've managed to put them all together.

It's not that I'm eating healthier, though. I am acquiring both an ice cream habit and an iced coffee habit. The latter, well, I'm having it twice a day now. But I don't buy them from outside for the most part. Dunkin' cravings aside, it's too much of a faff to have, say, just one frappuccino delivered. I don't get Pickup Coffee when I'm alone. The coffee is good and affordable, sure, but the Grab delivery charge is just twenty bucks off the actual drink. My mix is half a tablespoon of Great Taste's strong coffee, mixed with hot water, and topped with a little over a tablespoon of condensed milk.

At least on this front it feels like I have a grip on things. Get the flat sorted, get your finances sorted. Of course, I didn't do it alone. My mother is a neat freak. I asked her to give me a checklist of what I should do when I'm doing my weekly flat cleaning. There isn't one, but I guess the house has never been spotless.

I am on the phone with her daily again, just figuring out my grocery plans. Today, I got stuff for ginisang munggo and another attempt at pad krapow gai. Maybe I should get a notebook just to write my recipes down, but then, doing that as well might be overwhelming for me.

But then, there are the things you don't see coming. Yesterday my editor sent me their annual Christmas gift to their columnists. Two years ago, it was a huge ham. Last year, it was a bibingka cake, or cheesecake, I don't really remember. It was hard enough to go through with two people living together; in both instances I surrendered and sent some to my folks on Christmas day.

This year, I got a burnt Basque cheesecake. Two of them. "I wanted a different second cake, but they're suddenly out of stock," my editor explained.

If you haven't had a burnt Basque cheesecake - well, if there's one thing you should know, it's that you don't really eat a huge slice of it. A small slice is enough, more than enough. There's a reason they come in small boxes, but at the same price as the cheesecakes we're used to. It's dense. It's rich. It can be an effort to eat, but if it's good, it's good.

I got two boxes. Well, one is definitely going to my folks, and it's already in the fridge, unopened, waiting for the day I go home for Christmas. As for the box I did open... I'll say I can divide it into six slices, six days, maybe more. Is that a good idea? The things you don't have to think about when there's two of you.