What's Cookin

Waaaaaaay back in the day, I had this dream of writing a book.

A cookbook.

For bachelors.

I thought it was a cool concept to help my many peers whose cooking alphabet was limited to PB&J.

In 1981, I also thought it was a cool concept when I wrote out literally hundreds of make believe trades that teams could make.

Little did I know I was inventing fantasy baseball.

Now as for that cookbook.

I definitely love my food.   I love shopping for it, I love making it and I sure love eating it.

I love going online, finding a recipe and giving it a try at home.

It is definitely a hit and miss concept and with a wife and three kids, you can’t afford to miss.

Now that I am back to being a bachelor, at least for now, the daily menu is up to me.

These days, I’ve got a little kitchen where I can get done what needs to be done.

But with my schedule, there’s not a whole lot of time to do it.

So my trips to the grocery store are pretty simple.

Find the least overpriced foods in the store and buy them.

Last weekend, I spent like $50 and came home with nothing.

Not quite literally nothing, but it sure felt like it.

A couple bottles of water, whipped peanut butter and strawberry jelly, raisin bran and milk, a bag of bananas, some pita bread, some sliced turkey, carrots and hummus and some chocolate pudding.

Soy Chocolate Pudding, that was the one on sale.

Somehow that lasted me the week, but its time to go back to the store.

There is a grocery store just a few blocks from me.

I stopped in the other day to just pick up some sun block and deodorant.

In my old life that would’ve been about $10 for both.

Not here.

This is New York City.

You know, the concrete jungle where dreams and outrageous rent is made of.

I don’t know what kind of special smell that deodorant had, but it was $8.99 for one stick, more than three times what I used to pay.

And the sun block, the generic sun block, was $15.99 for what would’ve cost me about $6.

Fortunately for me, the grocery store employee, who showed me where the sun block was located, saw the look of fear in my eyes when I saw the price.

So she pulled me aside.

She whispered, like we were doing some type of drug deal.


“Hey, head over to K-Mart, they had some sun block on clearance last week for $2.50.”

She then looked around to make sure that none of her fellow employees could hear her push a client out of the store.

I walked about 20 blocks, across town, to the closest K-Mart.

When I got there, I found the special pre-packaged deodorant, 2-for-1 for $9.   

Winner.

And the sun block was not quite the $2.50 as advertised, but it was under $10.

I’m not really sure if the amount of time I put into the transaction was worth the final result, but at least it gave me something to do.

When it comes to bachelor living and bachelor cooking, being creative is the number one ingredient.

For example, if you’ve got a couple boxes of leftovers, throw them all in a bowl, mix ‘em up, throw some grated cheese and hot sauce over it and you’ve got yourself a real meal.

Or in my case this morning, the last piece pita had a beautiful piece of green mold in the middle of it.

So there went the plans for PB&J.

Instead I took a scoop of the peanut butter, a scoop of the strawberry jelly, mixed it in with the chocolate pudding, dropped in raisin bran for some crunch and...

TADA...  

We’ve got breakfast.

A meal fit for a King.


And a Bachelor.