Expensive to Eat

I want to prepare better, tastier, and most especially healthier meals for myself.  As I grow older and hopefully wiser, I see the importance of eating a healthier, more sensible diet than what I have done in the past.  My body needs to be properly nourished in order to regain and maintain good health, so it must be fed good food.  I have always given my vehicles the care they need to run well and long, and I have always made sure I took good care of my animals, feeding them only the best of what they need to be healthy and happy, yet I have not followed through with this type of care & treatment to my own body.  It is time to smarten up and take better care of me!  This being said, it is really a huge challenge to do so.  I look at recipes for good, health filled meals, and there are many ingredients I have never heard of before, or there are ingredients I know well, but can only purchase in larger quantities than I need for the recipe and I know the rest of it will go bad before I get the chance to use it up.  For example, 1 tsp. of fresh cilantro, finely chopped.... I have to buy a full bunch of cilantro and the teaspoon of it for the recipe is only a small amount of what is there so the rest of it would go in the garbage before I could use it for another recipe some time down the road. A recipe calling for 2 stalks of celery leaves the rest of the head of celery to rot, unless one can use it up in some way.  I enjoy eating celery raw and I know it's good for me, yet I alone can only eat so much of it.  Being a single person really makes meal preparations a challenge compared to having a full family that would eat up the meal so much faster and therefore require many more meals to be cooked, and the ingredients to be used up much more quickly.  Being a single person, it is almost as expensive to live as it is for a family of 4, when you consider rent or mortgage has to be paid for 1 or for a family.... hydro, heat, phone, etc etc all have to be paid for 1 or for an entire family, then the food comes to nearly as much money, but the family eats it and the single person tosses a lot more into the garbage or, as in my case, the compost pile.