Will Work for Food

There's only one secret to bachelor cooking-- not caring how it tastes.
-- P.J. O'Rourke

Was cooking tonight. This seemed to impress Concord Mary. Little did she know that it tasted like crap. But she wanted a picture of the franken-dinner. Sent her this e-mail. And it was so good (the e-mail, not the food) that I'm reformatting and 16th Parallelling it!

TiaKatie's e-mail to Concord Mary

Date: Thu, 19 Jan 2006 20:41:38 -0800 (PST) From: "TiaKatie" <tiakatie@oakland.com> Subject: yay for bachelor cooking! To: "Concord Mary" <concordmary@3000milesfromfreakingoakland.com> OK here's a picture of my bachelor concoction. You want the recipe? You got it. Don't eat this with anything less than four cosmos in you. And make sure you're wearing paisley. OAKLAND PASTA CRAPFEST some pasta some frozen vegetables you found in your freezer minced garlic olive oil leftover pizza crushed red pepper packets from domino's parmasan cheese packets from domino's water salt Don't bother to preheat oven. Don't even bother setting it to any particular temperature. Just pick something over 250 and you should be fine. Take everything out of the oven, place the pizza on your pizza sheet. Put that fucker in, and forget about it. Boil some water. Throw in a pinch of salt. Get some of the noodles which you likely found in your cabinet, and cook that shit. Booyah! Drain that shit, and put it to the side. Collanders and strainers may facilitate this. When all else fails, you can use an old hard hat. Tear open the plastic bag of frozen vegetables which you bought several months ago. Avoid the temptation to use the bag of vegetables which have been sitting in your freezer door: they look like shit. Slam the vegetables against your counter to break off several fist-sized chunks. Throw them in the wok. Oh, you should've been warming up the wok in the background. Or not. Really, it doesn't matter at this point. Thaw out your vegetables. Keep your wok on constant low heat. Or sweltering hot heat, like any good bachelor can tell the difference. Sooner or later (hopefully sooner if you're really goddam hungry) the vegetables will thaw. Clear out an LZ (landing zone) for the minced garlic in the middle of the wok. Spoon out a big, damn tablespoonful of the garlic, and throw that shit down into the (hopefully) thawed-out vegetables. Careful now, chief, because that garlic cooks up fast! Throw in anywhere between 3 tablespoons to the whole damn bottle of olive oil. Mix that shit up. Before your garlic burns. (If by now your garlic has burned, fuck it all and put some jeans on. Hopefully the Wendy's is still open...) La la la, mix up your oil, garlic and vegetables. Eventually put the drained noodles in there. Mix that shit up some more. If you're feeling fancy, get another bowl and eat out of it. Otherwise, nothing wrong with eating right out of the emm-effing wok. Yeah, bitches! Garnish with crushed red peppers and cheese. En-fucking-joy. OH SHIT, SEE? I FORGOT ABOUT THE PIZZA! GET THE FUCKING PIZZA OUT OF THE GODDAM OVEN! ___________________________ He told me, it must have been a thousand times, let everything you do show your respect for the game. Don't cheat yourself, and don't cheat your teammates. - Robb Nen, on his father Dick Nen S1.33 SKI++ MIL++ QUI++# RWG+++# KRA+++! f+>++ n Ips $ 8F16, 4F06, 4F02 M1978

Part of me thinks I'm playing up the helpless bachelor angle to Concord Mary, who is a self-proclaimed old fashioned, goody two-shoes kinda chick. Although after yet another foray into the realm of cooking for one's self, I don't think I'm faking it...

Luckily, Nyree Minasian has just called, and indicated that he'd be up for an excursion to the Zoo tonight! I can pick up a slice of pizza!

Katie Greene, Vice President of Public Relations, Expresso Parking