So I am finally learning to cook. In the last three days, I have made three meals– none of which have resulted in food poisoning to those I call family and all of which have been more complicated than Pillsbury cookies (my former claim to fame). Granted I haven’t used any meat– or meat like substances– but I’m getting there.

I’m at that stage where I like recipes laid out with the precision of military specs: “Add 1 teaspoon of garlic, stir for 54 seconds. Breathe. Stop stirring. ” I level teaspoons and tablespoons, and if the recipe calls for a couple of minutes of stirring, I certainly think that warrants a timer. Similarly, no ‘adjusting, tweaking, or substituting’ for me. The size of ‘a pinch’ currently confounds me. Big pinch? Little pinch? Fatty fingers? Bony ass ones? And the use of the words ’salt to taste’ generally throws me into a tizzy. Look ,just tell me how much salt I need and we’ll go from there. Jesus, Emeril, you’ve dictated the rest of the recipe, why back down now? I avoid recipes in which all of the aforementioned terms appear.

Yesterday, I braved cooking lasagna for my younger (read: ‘bratty little’) brother, Mark. Now, keep in mind that this is the same boy that my mother recently lamented that she should have eaten at birth. In fact, I must have been giving out distress signals because out of nowhere popped three do-gooder chefs (including my recently deceased grandmother), all of whom poked and prodded my lasagna and offered conflicting suggestions about how to prevent the massive disaster that I was heading for.

Nonetheless, three hours later, I had developed a “Ripley, blow this thing into space” size ulcer and something that with massive quantities of LSD could be mistaken for a lasagna. After that, I was patient. I sat and waited for a full mouthful or two, before asking the obligatory “so what do you think?”.

Mark: “It’s a little bland.”

Needless to say, this response fell far short of the obscene amount of feigned praise that I was anticipating.

I spent the next hour or two, crying in a small broom closet before I was back on the Pillsbury website, planning the next batch of ‘my world famous’ cookies. While perusing the website, I happened to click on the ‘Doughboy’s Dinner Recipes.’ They looked really good which made me really sad. The little guy is after all a ball of dough. Fortunately, though, because he is fundamentally flour and water, I was able to fantasize about committing gruesome acts against his person, without hastening my descent into hell.

Twenty minutes later, I was starting to feel like my old self again.