This post was submitted by a friend of mine who’s desperate to have his voice heard and his grievance aired. Naturally, this person chose my blog as a platform. Due to the sensitive nature of this issue, I’ve chosen to not to reveal his/her identity. Instead, I’ll just refer to him by the pseudonym ”Jonathan Maimon.“ For Mr. Maimon’s sake, I sincerely hope Mark Bittman will notice just how many lives he’s destroyed. Help Jonny out. Send an e-mail to Bittman at bitten@nytimes.com.

Mark Bittman is really stressing me out. I have his book “How to Cook Everything.” There are so many recipes. I estimate that it has 3,000 recipes. What am I supossed to do with 3,000 recipes? I can’t sit down, look at it, and figure out what to cook because there are 3,000 recipes to sort through. Even if I cooked a new recipe every night, it would take me 8.2 years to finish the book. I might not even need to cook by then. I could be married or homeless. Those are the two most common reasons for someone not to cook.

You know?

I mean, I just wanna know how to cook a chicken. I dont want to know how to braise a chicken with cranberry aoili or herbs de provence or a wasabi miso glaze. Then my kitchen is full of ingredients that I never use like galangal or fish sauce or mustard seed. I just want to cook a chicken and have it not taste bad. You’d think this book would tell me how to do that because it is called, “How to Cook Everything,” but that “everything” doesn’t include plain chicken.

It’s really stressing me out.

It’s getting to the point that I can’t go out with my friends on the weekend because I am worrying too much about what I am going to cook during the week. I’m spending all my time trying to figure out what to cook, and this book doesn’t let me figure out what I want to cook because there are 3,000 recipes to sort through. That’s 8.2 years of recipes.

It’s totally ruining my social life.