I saw a play today. This is something I almost never do, but I did. I saw Contact, the Tony award winning show about, well, human contact. Touch, and its effect. It's a musical without song, and leaving only dance. It was, to put it mildly, amazing. The choreography was only done one better by the sheer beauty of those performing in the show. I'm going to leave it there, simply saying, if you have a chance, see it, it's at Lincoln center, and it's unfuckingbelievable.

And now something I promised myself last night, a bit of writing that isn't total navel gazing.

Men like tools, and I am a Man. This is established fact. Men like cars because they give men an excuse to play with tools. Also, because cars are a good metaphor for just about everything important in reality. Or so I'm told. You'd have to ask Dingo about that.

Tools, however, I can understand.

I don't have a car in the city, as Checker lives happily in a garage in Connecticut awaiting my eventual move out of Manhattan (to Greenwich? The thought recently crossed my mind, although why, I'm not sure) and my need of her.

Which brings me rapidly to my longstanding fetish with tools that I can talk about freely on my website and not give my parents paroxysms about - cooking. I adore cooking. Hands on, get yourself a bit dirty in the process, take a bunch of stuff, apply heat, liquids, and lots of tools, and voila, you've got a meal.

In fact, I used to cook so often that I'd bring people over for meals. A handful of friends would come and sample whatever I'd figured out or learned how to do in the last few weeks, and we'd feast and watch a movie and generally enjoy ourselves.

It's the middle of February, and I haven't cooked for anyone else in god knows how long. This is a heinous crime perpetrated against me by the man, and frankly, I'm going to start leaving threatening messages on my friends answering machines if they don't start coming over for meals.

Unfortunately, while working for Nextwave (my previous employer), I hardly cooked for myself. Long hours and good pay meant meals out with the boss as we progressed through our project. But now that I'm not with them anymore, I've come back to loving cooking, and my kitchen tools. Coming back to my cuisinart (fast spinning blades!!) and my blender (other fast spinning blades) and blender (TORQUE!). I find myself going to a restaurant supply store at least once a month just to drool over the Kitchenaid standing mixers. 350 watts of pure spinning action - add juicers, dough hooks, and heck, I'm sure they've got blades too. Tools all over my kitchen.

And not just tools, Men, and I, like to play with fire. Nothing screams manliness quite like having power tools whirring while flames are shooting around at our command. Fire. Power tools. No wonder all the Swerdloff men cook.

My cupboard and larder all starts with one of the simplest things to make, yet the lynchpin of my kitchen: stock.

I make my own chicken stock. It's dead easy to do, and it takes a total of four hours. Anytime I decide that my apartment needs a good cleaning, it's a good time to make a stock. I can clean my apartment while I roast the bones, then pop in a DVD, and when the DVD is done, boom, stock.

And here is my secret recipe, and I swear to you it's this easy.

Buy chicken bones. Your butcher will sell them to you, since they need to do something with the bones from the boneless skinless breasts and thighs. Buy the bones only, because they're usually not more than $.50/pound, and if they are, you're getting ripped off. Get two carrots, two stalks of celery, a large onion (not Vidalia) a few sprigs of Thyme and some parsley.

Get a good sized knife (no need for a machette), and cut everything up into 8 pieces - both carrots, the celery, the onion, and roast for 45 minutes to an hour at 475 in a baking dish. Something that'll allow the drippings to carmelize. For those of you men used to testing things by hand, trust me, this one needs a thermometer. 475 degrees yields incineration, the step after third degree burns.

After that, put everything, including 5 sprigs of thyme, and a bunch of parsley into a pot, cover with water, boil, then turn the heat down to a simmer, till bubbles just barely keep popping up, and leave it. Turn on your movie. When the movie is over, strain the stock and discard the chunks.

That's it. Easy.

Then, to make a simple dinner that's amazingly good, take 2 chicken breasts, dregde the dead flesh in flour, saute, (to sautee means to take a frying pan, fill it with a tablespoon or so of butter or oil, and heat it until very hot, then cook your meat through, about 10 minutes for chicken, flipping after about 5 minutes) take half a cup of that stock after they're sauteed, and add 2 tbsps of mustard, and let that cook down to about half. Then add 2 tbsps of cream, and cook that down too. At the same time, make long grain rice using 3/4 cups of rice and 1.25 cups of the stock. Steam a green vegetable (I usually use string beans) and bang, you've got a meal.

The instructions look long, but it's not actually much work at all. And my guess is that chicks dig it, but hey, I haven't cooked for anyone lately.

Which of course begs the question, that if the fastest way to a man's heart is through his stomache, what's the fastest way to your heart?