Jill and I are starting to shop for a house. Having lived in a house with a scary basement including a room we affectionately deemed "the murdered children room"* this comic presents a very real and legitimate fear.

* - 6x5 room, covered with falling down acoustic tiles, drain in the floor, no windows, and it locked from the outside... Seriously, that basement was freaky. Ask anybody.

Penny Arcade! - Perfectly Reasonable

Table giving the average cost of a 2200 ft^2 4 bedrrom 2.5 bath house with a 2 card garage.

US Average is: $354,000
Atlanta average is: $283,090

Most expensive housing markets

] Bound in the kind of thick, stain-proof pages usually
] employed for preschool boardbooks, this cookbook dumbs
] down basic recipes to inventive new lows. Rather
] than saute or simmer, readers are instructed to "dump"
] and "nuke" ingredients, as in a recipe for Sweet and Sour
] Meatballs, which requires a can of crushed pineapples, a
] can of sloppy joe sauce and a pound of frozen precooked
] meatballs. Other recipes not for the faint of heart
] include Slab O'Ham with Redeye Gravy (essentially
] microwaved slices of canned ham in a coffee/pork sauce
] gravy) and Hot Slam Dunk, a dip that calls for
] mayonnaise, sour cream, canned artichoke hearts, spinach
] and a few other ingredients to be microwaved together for
] several minutes. (The authors award "Extra credit" to
] those who pour the mixture into a hollowed-out loaf of
] pumpernickel.)

I bought this book for a friend recently and thought it might be interesting to some of the cooking challenged people here. It is part of a series of books by men's health that are so dummy proof that it even has pictures of the ingredients that you need to get at the grocery. It also gives you the nutritional info and helpful tips. Check it out, you can preview some of the pages on amazon.

Sometimes, we need shiny pictures are simple instructions!

A Man, a Can, a Plan : 50 Tasty Meals You Can Nuke in No Time