A lot of people make bad frozen food choices. I’m just trying to help prevent that.

Shortly after getting food poisoning on a day when I’d bought all my food on campus and long after deciding I hated cooking for just myself, my level of knowledge about the dark world of frozen and microwavable food began to skyrocket. One day when I was in a group looking at the frozen food options in LaVerde’s while trying to improvise dinner in the half-hour break between rehearsals, I impressed some friends with my knowledge of what you were or weren’t going to regret putting in your mouth. One even suggested that these skills could have a humanitarian bent, rather than just being kinda sad. Thus this column was born.

It's not that I don't know how to cook. No, I occasionally bust out the pots and pans and make enough ziti or latkes to feed a small army. It's not that I can't — it's just that I don't want to. And over the past three years at MIT, I've learned how to avoid it very well. A bit too well some might say.