Women are made to cook. I know it. You know it. Your grandma has a pie in the oven right now. Sure, men can cook, but whenever that happens it is usually an occasion for fanfare, fire of some sort, or at least differently shaped (read "Mickey Mouse") pancakes. Disagree? Take a look at the TV (specifically the food network, but if you're already steamed about the first paragraph you might want to just watch whatever�and stay there.) There's Emeril who gets "oohs" and "aahs" when his water comes to a boil and sounds like he's calling the play by play on a prize fight when he adds spices, while Rachel Ray quietly prepares her delicious (looking) 30-minute meals day in and day out on a budget.

Point? Yeah, I have one, hold on. You see, any schmo (read "guy") can learn to cook a dish or even a meal, but when it comes to the kind of day to day cooking that is required to keep a family healthy, wealthy and wise, you have to turn to the� Arby's drive through. No seriously, you turn to the "Pizza" section in the yellow pages; they usually deliver. So what happens when you are single male, living alone, without a culinary caretaker of the opposite gender? (I phrase this so delicately because "woman to cook for you" is one of those crowded-room ear perk head-turn phrases, like "puked on the lawn" or "spent the night in jail.") How does one conquer the thankless job of cooking for oneself day after monotonous day? Well, if you don't have the budget (or stomach) for 14 trips to Arby's a week, the following tips will have you cooking with less thought and effort than it took to write this post.

1. Its Food. You're just going to eat it anyway.
   What are you going to do? Put a piece of parsley on your plate so you can look at it, then throw it away in 7 minutes when you're done eating? Don't waste time dressing up your food, it all looks the same so your stomach anyway. If food was supposed to be art, someone would have painted rows of soup cans already.
2. Your two best friends: Peanut Butter and Jelly.
   My week's grocery shopping is 90% complete after I pick up economy size jars of each of these items. It takes about 3 minutes and 40 seconds to make a complete meal when you've got PB+J in your arsenal. Out of bread? Don't worry, versatility is one of their strong points. Try 'em in a tortilla shell. (Leave out the jelly and you've got a meal you can eat on the go, with no bread crumbs to dust off afterwards!)
3. Homemade Pizza. Seriously, its not that hard.
   At first glance, this may seem like actual cooking. Don't worry, its not. The trick to homemade pizza is to remember that pretty much anything on a crust surrounded by tomato sauce and cheese is a valid pizza. Just grab a ready made crust, throw some sauce on it and dump in whatever ingredients you feel like eating. Cover with cheese and put it in the oven for the length of a Simpson's episode (with commercials.) My last pizza was accented with a pound of ground beef and lightly seasoned with a can of corn.

These tips (along with cans of soup, spaghetti, and eating at my friends' houses) have kept me fed and fit thus far in my life of bachelor-hood (which probably will not end any time soon as long as I keep making remarks similar to the first sentence of this article).

Oh, you're probably wondering about the title of this post. If you find yourself in that situation I don't know what to tell you. (Probably best to keep it to yourself.)