I can’t cook.

It’s a skill I never really picked up.

My culinary expertise starts and ends with making Hamburger Helper, usually without the Hamburger, a meal I lovingly refer to as Helper. I once tried to broil a frozen pizza. I burnt a can of chicken noodle soup.

I’ve survived so far on a robust bachelor diet of pre-packaged ramen noodles, styrofoam take-out boxes and frozen dinners. When I’m feeling fancy, I’ll put an egg in the ramen and eat it out of a big-ass coffee mug. How’s that for presentation?

I know what presentation is. I’ve watched Chopped. I’ve read Kitchen Confidential. All I learned is that I’d get my feelings and my fingers hurt working in a commercial kitchen.

The problem isn’t interest. The problem is effort. I’m too lazy to actually get out a pan or pot and give it a shot. If a recipe has more than four ingredients and one of them isn’t ground beef, then I’m pretty much worthless.

Today that changes.

This Christmas I was given the textbook/recipe book The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking through Science, by J. Kenji Lopez-Alt. It has 960 pages of food science, recipes and advice on how to sharpen knives.

My mission? Beat the book from cover to cover. From “Fool-Proof Soft Boiled Eggs” to “Crispy Oven French Fries.” Which are kind of underwhelming titles for the first and last recipes in the book.

One recipe a week. One write-up a week, hosted here. I hope you enjoy my attempt to not set myself or my home on fire. I hate breakfast so that section of the book should be pretty exciting at least.

Check in tomorrow for the first attempt, something simple to start.

Something I’m used to making out of a blue box with a dinosaur on it.