I have a table that I want to use for preference settings and another I want to use as a 'Home' page.  These should both be '1-record' layouts.

Is there any simpler way of preventing record creation (and deletion) other than creating custom menus with the  'New Record' / Delete record commands turned off?  I'd guess probably not, but sometimes I discover I do things the hard way, so would appreciate a little confirmation!

There are two (and only two) safe ways to prevent users from doing something: user privileges and field validation. In this case, you can simply deny the Create privilege for this table in the users privilege set.