Recipes for People Who Don’t Cook, but Have No Choice This Weekend Because Their Partner Is Out of Town

Do phrases like “until shimmering,” “pan sear,” and “preheat the oven” send a shiver down your spine? Does someone other than you handle the cooking in your household? Did that person have the audacity to skip town this weekend on a mandatory work trip, leaving you no choice but to enter the puzzling world of pots and pans if you want to survive? Here are four simple meals to prepare when you’re saddled with the responsibility of feeding yourself.

Enjoy!


Hershey’s Milk Chocolate Nuggets

Ingredients

  • A bag—or several—of Hershey’s Milk Chocolate Nuggets

Directions

  1. Forgo the kitchen scissors and rip the Hershey’s bag open in the worst way possible, like you’re a chocolate-fiending Incredible Hulk, causing dozens of silver nuggets to rain down on the dirty kitchen floor.
  2. Place the grubby floor chocolates into a bowl. Dispose of the mutilated bag. It’s totally useless at this point.
  3. Eat one to one hundred thousand Hershey’s Milk Chocolate Nuggets.
  4. Drink a liter of water because your throat is coated in a solid inch of chocolate sludge, making it impossible to breathe. As you gulp down the water, notice your severely altered mouth chemistry. Accept the fact that your gums will feel like they’re molting for the next five to ten business days.
  5. Pee nine times.

Peanut Butter Crackers

Ingredients*

  • Ritz Peanut Butter Sandwich Crackers

Directions

  1. Open a box of Ritz Peanut Butter Sandwich Crackers.
  2. Dislocate your jaw.
  3. Shovel two cracker sandwiches at a time into your gaping maw as you watch three hours of 90 Day Fiancé: Love In Paradise without blinking.
  4. Chug a gallon of water because the crackers had enough salt to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool.
  5. Urinate 12 times.

*Alternatively, this recipe can be made from scratch. (You can buy Ritz crackers and peanut butter separately, then combine them on your own.) Although the homemade method is more cost-effective, it’s also more time-consuming. Remember that you are not a Michelin chef—you are a person who thinks using a butter knife is “too much work.” It’s important to stay realistic in order to avoid a mid-meal meltdown.


Pickled Red Beet Eggs

Ingredients

  • A friend or family member who gave you pickled red beet eggs during a recent visit

Directions

  1. Search your odorous fridge for the Tupperware of gifted eggs.
  2. Unlatch the container, carefully avoiding contact with the sticky residue that sloshed out of the plastic vessel during egg transport.
  3. Take out as many pretty pink ovals as your hungry little gremlin heart desires!
  4. Generously sprinkle the eggs with salt and pepper.
  5. Eat each egg in two bites like you’re Bill Murray in Osmosis Jones, get the hiccups, and briefly choke on a yolk.
  6. Guzzle a large glass of water to recover from your near-death experience, and because you over-salted the eggs. (Classic you.)
  7. Use the loo. Twice.

Chips and Salsa

Ingredients

  • Tortilla chips
  • Salsa

Directions

  1. Spin the lazy merry-go-round commonly known as “Susan” four times, thinking, “Where the hell are those Tostitos I put in here two weeks ago?”
  2. Remember that you stashed the elusive chips on the top shelf of the cabinet! Clumsily hoist yourself up onto the countertop because you don’t feel like breaking out a step stool for this.
  3. Secure the bag.
  4. Falter on your way back down and crack your skull open on a cold slab of granite.
  5. Crawl to the fridge, using its grimy door handles to slowly lift your barely conscious body.
  6. Grab the salsa from the top shelf. For your noggin, get an ice pack from the freezer.
  7. Through blurred vision, see that the salsa expired in 2023. Open the lid, sniff, and decide to take your chances. Mumble something reassuring about the magic of preservatives that you don’t even know to be true.
  8. Fill a bowl with the aged salsa and a second bowl with the chips.
  9. Go to town!
  10. Drink six barrels of water because one Tostitos triangle has enough salt to murder the entire slug population.
  11. Piss 47 times, stopping periodically to vomit due to head injury. (Or food poisoning. Or both.)
  12. Go to the hospital.

Mangia! Mangia! We hope these delicious recipes empower you to get off your butt and finally cook for yourself. (If not, just order a pizza.)