A staple to a strong diet that's high in carbs and low in fat can be, of all things, refried beans. While refried beans can get tiresome, there are a number of things you can do to (quite literally) spice them up! Using cajun spices, green salsa, red salsa, and enchilada or taco sauce are great examples.

Today, we decided to make a mega-meal. A "mega-meal" in the RAW lexicon is a meal consisting of more than 700 calories. We discovered that if you drain out the water broth and put tuna in refried beans, you can easily add texture and low-fat meat. While we're not huge fans of tuna in general, when placed in the refried beans it actually tastes as much like chicken as anything else.

We then took it a step further and discovered that if you put an egg inside the tuna bean bowl and cook it thoroughly, you have tuna and refried beans that tastes like... well, tuna and refried beans.

Except with more cholesterol. And fat.

Oh well, maybe next time!

Here at the RAW Cooking Show, we usually talk about burning food, plates, and other food-related things. Today, we're going to talk about how to set your pants on fire.

First a small physics lesson. It shouldn't be news as anyone that has attended elementary school knows it: Lying puts your pants on fire. Scientists have never discovered why exactly this occurs, but it's an undisputed truth.

So here's what you need to turn your pants on fire:

One (1) RAW

One (1) Blog

Several (n) commercials advertising Green Bean Casserole

One (1) helping of Green Bean Casserole

One (1) really bad taste left in RAW's mouth

And here's how you make it:
Put a RAW in front of the television while some Green Bean Casserole ads are playing on the television. Leave him there just long enough to garner a curiosity about a food he does not suspect he likes. Then place RAW in front of the computer where he will then explain his curiosity as to why anyone would like anything called Green Bean Cassarole.

Then tell him that it actually tastes good. This will start the pants-burning process.

Once the pants are ablaze, you must make sure that the odor catches the RAW's notice. To do this, place him in a company cafeteria that serves generally good food and have him, out of the previously simmered curiosity, give it a try.

The RAW will then smell the burning pants and then you can laugh at him.

Once the laughing commences, the dish has already been served.

Today's installment is going to focus on food procurement, as I just went shopping.

I usually go to Kroger's with certain goals in mind, but it almost never turns out like I planned. Last night, I could tell by looking over my receipt that I realized that, as evidenced by the contents of my haul, I am

(1) Trying to save money.

(2) Going on a diet.

Everything I got was either cheap or healthy. I haven't decided if I'm just a displaced college student (18 packs of Ramen), a health-conscious yuppee (low-fat Ravioli), a coupon-snipping housewife (Lots of Big K's Diet Cola), or a carpetbagger (pecante sauce made in New Jersey, get a rope...).

Based on what I've eaten since, I have a few observations:

Hormel chili sucks, no matter how much you try to like it.

Anyone who looks at the health content of Hormel and Wolf, their primary competitor, will notice how much better the former is for you. Anyone who tastes them both will figure out why. Hormel is soupy, to say the least. It's actually not bad for RAW's Patented Stupendous Chili Cheese Dip (tm), but try, just try to eat it plain. It took my stomach hours to forgive me. Even the chunks of meat taste awful. Kinda like in turkey-based chili, but I think I recall that turkey-based chili is better.

I hope so, I got a can of that to give a test run soon. Thank heavens I got Wolf turkey chili. If Hormel's beef chili is that bad, I don't want to know.

There is something aesthetically disturbing about corn in pecante sauce.

The New York Brand folks don't seem to realize that, though. Or maybe I'm just off-my-rocker on this issue.

Half-Percent milk doesn't taste as different from skim as I remember.

I thought I remembered that 1/2% making "all the difference in the world" and tasting more like 2% than skim. Apparently not, or perhaps I should have gone with skim first so I could appreciate the difference.

Doesn't matter, though, I'm just gulping the stuff down. I'll probably go for skim next time so that I can do so without even a tinge of guilt.

Despite what you might think, Ramen is not particularly healthy.

40% of your daily alotment of saturated fats in each baggie. On the other hand, it really fills me up and gives me that nostalgic feeling from college that I-can't-believe-this-meal-only-costed-ten-cents.

Health content of different flavors of the same brand of InstaBurritos vary wildly

Even if neither is advertised as being low in fat or 50% less fat or whatnot, beef and bean burritos have twice the fat and saturated fat contents of cheese and bean burritos. Given how superior cheese is to any other food on the face of the earth, I think I'll go the healthier route in the future.

Interestingly, though, neither are particularly bad for you fat-wise so long as you don't eat many. Of course, those evil packaged food companies maximize their formulas to taste good so that you'll want to eat more. Bastards.

Your food is going to be high in fat, high in sugar, expensive, taste nasty, or be obscenely high in sodium.

Probably two or three of the five, actually.

If you don't read the label before you eat something, you're going to really wonder what they meant by that.

What do they mean "cook thoroughly"? How much is thoroughly? I mean, I put it in the microwave for a minute but then got impatient and ate it anyway. Is that thoroughly?

There wasn't any meat in there, so why does it need to be cooked? Is it a matter of taste (it was quite hard)? Is it a matter of digestion? Is an alien going to burst out of my stomach as I sleep?

Today on the RAW Cooking Show for Bachelors, we will discuss a simple and easy way to diet eating everyone's favorite breakfast food: bacon.

For this, you will need:
Two (2) strips of bacon
One (1) Frying pan
One (1) Plate
One (1) spatula
One (1) empty stomach

How to prepare:
1. Take two strips of bacon and cut them up by the inch.
2. Place into frying pan, turn frying pan up all the way.
3. Allow bacon to stew in its own fat as it cooks.
4. When thoroughly cooked, take bacon from flying pan and put into plate.
5. Remove food from plate and place into empty stomach's receptical (aka your mouth).

Now, I know what you're asking. You're asking "How can this qualify as a diet? Are you talking Atkins or something?"

Why no, I am not. Trust me on this one. The lynchpin to any diet is taking in fewer calories and fat calories and/or carbohydrates. This takes care of all three.

Prepare it as above and eat it and YOU WILL NEVER WANT TO EAT ANYTHING EVER AGAIN!

It's a return to the RAW Cooking Quiz. Last quiz was over fire hazard safety in the kitchen. This one covers physical burns.

1. Multiple Choice: Frying butter that splashes up and hits your thumb hurts:
a) Excruciatingly
b) Tremendously
c) A little
d) Like a mofo
e) a,b, and d, but not c

2. True or False: Breathe, breathe, breathe
a) True
b) False

3. True or False: As your thumb is frying, it's useful to remember in Fight Club where Tyler Durden doused the Narrator with chemicals to create chemical burn in order for him to embrace intense, physical pain.
a) True
b) False

4. True or False: It helps to quell the intense pain of the thumb if you hit something. Hard.
a) True
b) False

5. Multiple Choice: You've heard that you should douse a burn with cold water because you will blister. Do you:
a) Use warm water as you've been told to
b) Say 'screw the blister' and use cold water for the most GLORIOUS FEELING OF RELIEF EVER
c) Use baking soda because that works on everything

6. True or False: Physical pain caused in the process of making dinner does NOT make it taste that much better for the effort.
a) True
b) False

7. True or False: Good girlfriends are impressed by battle scars from the kitchen
a) True
b) False


Answers:
1. E - And more!
2. B, False - Scream, yell, curse, repeat
3. B, False - Fight Club, while a great movie, is full of crap
4. B, False - It's benefit is negligible. It takes the pain away from the burn briefly and replaces it with a hurt hand. Then, however, both hurt. By the next day, you still feel the thumb but not the hand.
5. Choose your own answer. I choose B and would do it all over again.
6. A, True - At all.
7. A, True - Ahem... they ARE!

Next week's show: How am I going to top this? I hope I don't...

Tired and warn out from cooking? Miss the good old meals like Mom used to make? Well, today's recipe is the cure for what ails you!

Ingredients
One (1) Telephone
Ten (10) Sequential digits used to call your mother
One (1) Mother who lives nearby
One (1) car

Estimated time: Varies (It will take me approximately two hours)

How to prepare:
1. Pick up telephone.
2. Push the buttons with the ten sequential digits designated in the second item of the ingredients list.
3. Ask mother politely if she will be cooking any dinner tonight and, if she is, could you come down and partake. Toss in a pinch of expressed malnourishment and hunger. Add apology for your growling stomach as necessary.
4. Get into car, drive to mother's house.
5. Partake.
6. Enjoy.
7. Thank her profusely.

Note: In certain circumstances, the "mother" ingredient can be replaced by a girlfriend or significant other where applicable.

Join us next week for... who knows? Something to do with cooking, I'd imagine.

Last week we discussed the importance of remembering when your stove is on, disabled smoke detectors, and patient roommates. This week will be more pedestrian, I'm afraid. However, pedestrian (ie easy) cookies is essential for bachelors! Plus, as opposed to a diet consisting of Hot Pockets, Mac'n'Cheese, and Ramen, you can tell the ladies that you are a cook with this very simple meal.

This week's RAW Bachelor's Cooking Dish: Ground Beef, Cheese, and Tortilla Lump... or GBCTL (prounounce it GibiCkiTLe... and try not to work up any spit doing it).

All you need is:
One (1) wad of ground beef. This is important. A wadlet is too little and a glop is too much.
One (1) tortilla. Size doesn't matter here. The runt of the litter (ie Mission Tortilla sack) is just as good as the prize pick.
One (1) helping of grated cheese. Not to be confused with a "serving" as labelled on the back of the package so that it doesn't look like you're eating a days worth of fat in a single serving. Remember, fat has been declared healthy, so get a real bona fide helping. Actual size will vary according to appetite, belt size, and pregnancy status.

Steps:
1) Take the wad of beef and stomp it as it if were the mailman who left your delivery out in the pouring rain... outside the canopy in front of your door.
2) Roll flattened wad up and stomp again, this time imagine the head of the person that lives next door with the loud barking dog that he left at home alone... AGAIN!
3) Do not reroll the ground beef patty. Marvel at your awesome sense of restraint.
4) Disable fire alarm.
5) Put the patty in the frying pan, turn stove on "HI"
6) While the meat is frying away, quickly take cheese and spread it around tortilla and put on plate. If you have a styrofoam plate from yesterday, that'll do. Conservation of resources is what good-thinking people believe in.
7) When meat is sufficiently cooked (on both sides!! That's important!) place in the center of the tortilla. Fold tortilla around beef patty and industriously figure out a way to put the Ground Beef, Cheese, and Tortilla Lump on the pan upside down so that it burns wrapped up. By putting it in the pan where all the grease from the ground beef is, you are again maximizing resources. Think about it this way: An animal died for the fat you are consuming, so the lease you can do is use it for maximum effect to clog up your arteries. Besides, fat has been declared healthy.
8) Flip tortilla. It won't take long for the fat to burn in so keep an eye on it.
9) Place on yesterday's styrofoam plate and enjoy.

Note 1: Those who are in a hurry can freely skip steps 2,3, and 4.

Note 2: Sausage can be substituted for ground beef, though some butter would be helpful as the sausage creates surprisingly less grease than one might expect.

Note 3: It really does taste good, honest.

Next week's lesson: Who knows what splendor I'll discover or disaster I'll create!!

Early this week I finally got the kitchen set up. I have enjoyed my cooking for the last three evenings and it's been a learning experience. Want to test your skills against my own? Well you asked for it, so here it is. I present the RAW Cooking Quiz!

1. Multiple Choice: Imagine for a moment that you removed the skillet from the stove, but have neglected to turn the stove off. You take the omlette and put it on a styrofoam plate. You place the styrofoam plate on the stove so taht you can put the skillet under the sink. How long does it take for the styrofoam plate to become engulfed in flames?
a) under three seconds
b) over three, under ten seconds
c) thirty seconds to a minute
d) styrofoam is impervious to heat

2. Multiple Choice: How long goes it take for your fire alarm to go off?
a) five to ten seconds
b) over ten seconds, under a minute
c) between one and five minutes
d) it doesn't go off because you apparently never put batteries in it. Whew!

3. Multiple Choice: After the styrofoam-egg-sausage bonfire, the little black specs surrounding you are:
a) bugs
b) little styrofoam debris

4. True or False: If little black speckles of styrofoam debris land in your margerine tub, you shouldn't worry about it because you can't taste it anyway.
a) True
b) False

5. True or False: If placed on enough heat, styrofoam will actually fuse into the egg.
a) True
b) False

6. True of False: GOOD and PATIENT roommates will tolerate the occasional sensation of waking up to the smell of burnt styrofoam and will understand that it wasn't intentional, but rather the unfortunate side effect of living with a single man who is trying to learn his way around a kitchen.
a) True
b) False

Answer Key:
1. A - If you want to try this at home, I advise that you don't blink or you may miss it.
2. D - Whew.
3. B - They don't smell as nice as bugs, though.
4. A, TRUE - Can't taste it at all.
5. B, FALSE - With a lot of effort, you can pick it off. A. Lot. Of. Effort.
6. A, TRUE - That's what good roommates do. (luckily I have one)

Thank you for playing!