  "pasta con brocolli": 1. look through your fridge. find that all you have is half an onion and a stalk of brocolli. also, you have some condiments. 2. smell the onion and realize that it reaks. more than onions are supposed to.
throw the half onion away. get the brocolli out of the fridge. 3. look in the freezer. find that all you have are five supermarket brand, frozen pizzas. pull out a frozen pizza. 4. turn the oven on at 425 degrees. you don't need to look at the pizza instructions to know the cooking temperature. pizza is the only thing that you know how to cook in an oven, so that's the only oven temperature that you've ever used. and you eat so many of these frozen pizzas that you have memorized the instructions. 5. wash and break apart the brocolli. snap the stems so that your large brocolli tree becomes several small brocolli trees. put them on the pizza.
6. put the pizza in the oven. if you have a timer, set it for about 15 minutes. or you can do the smell test. when you can smell the pizza from where you are watching tv, it is done. if it isn't done, it won't particularly matter. because you are a starving bachelor who will eat anything and who no longer is concerned with things like adequate cooking or spending the rest of your life in a loveless and meaningless existence.
all you hope for, besides a decently cooked pasta con brocolli every once in a while, is that, when you die alone in your apartment, you will have had the foresight to put some pants on beforehand. 7. once the pizza is done, remove it from the oven and let it cool for a while. garnish with whatever you have lying around that you think might be good on it. garlic salt and/or hot sauce seem to work well. 8. once the pizza is cooled, take it and sit down in your folding beach chair that you have in the living room because you needed some kind of seating to replace the couch your roommate took with him when he moved out.
pick up the entire pizza and eat it without cutting it at all. normally, you could have cut it into slices. but your roommate that moved out owned the pizza cutter, in addition to all of the knives. 9. use your lap as your dinner table and try to think of ways to rationalize to yourself why it would be acceptible to be as excited as you are about the recent introduction of the speed channel and tech tv to your cable tv lineup.
10. realize that there is no way to justify such a thing. console yourself with the notion that eating so much of this "pasta con brocolli" on a regular basis will surely shorten your lifespan and put a mercifully early end to this farce that you call your personal life. 
