The Dark Art

He viewed his prey, laying there, waiting.  He took his time and selected the knife carefully.  It needed to be sharp, it needed to be the right length.  He positioned the victim on the board carefully making sure the grooves would catch anything that ran off the side.  He brought the knife up and down in firm, fluid, strokes.  Slowly and carefully he chopped the onion up into small squares and added it to the pot.  The soup would be delicious...

WAIT!  Don't Go!  It's just cooking!  Yes, my friend, you can do it too!  Cooking is a very important skill for anyone to have.  Without being able to cook, you are doomed to paying a large amount for just about any Italian food worth eating.  However, with a little time, a halfway horrible cook can still produce a decent soup.  A reasonable one can do much more.

Cooking is easy enough.  Take a pan, add food, heat and stir until food is combined and appears to be cooked.  Once you get a few basics down, you can start experimenting and working on foods you like.  In addition, try finding someone who doesn't appreciate a home cooked meal.  My wife likes my food so much that if there is cooking to be done at home, I am usually doing it.  Surprisingly, it is fun once you start.

Try something easy to start with:
-Take 2 slices of bread and butter them on one side each
-Take 3-4 slices of cheese and place them in-between the slices of bread, butter side out
-Heat pan to Medium-High-ish and spray with cooking spray or add a small amount of butter to make pan shiny.
-Place sandwich in pan

-Wait a minute or two then use fork or flat object (or even a spatula if you have one) to flip sandwich over.
-Wait a couple more minutes then remove sandwich to plate.

Congratulations, you have cooked a meal!  Offer it to your significant other, then make yourself another one.

If you find this was well received, try making a soup next.  Soup is easy to make and pretty forgiving when adding flavors and trying something different.

I recommend Italian soups for starters.  Garlic and tomato are pretty familiar to most bachelors and it is easy to tell when you have enough of both in a soup.  Since we are working to end the existence of the bad bachelor (the kind who doesn't want to be one, not the kind that does), small changes will help more than sweeping ones.


One last word of advice: If your wife says "Let's have [insert fast food chain name here] tonight," don't argue.