Free The Kitchen Counter Cooking School by Kathleen Flinn

tins of tuna, a jar of pineapple chunks. “We bought these for shish kebabs for camping,” she said. As she pulled out more cans, she made a discovery. “Here’s the pineapple chunks from last year.” She found many cans of turkey chili. “We put them on Fritos or things like that for a snack.”
    From another cupboard, she set out eight boxes of cornbread mix. “You just add water, it’s easy.” I asked why she had so many boxes of the same items.
    â€œWe spend so much at this one warehouse store that they told us to upgrade to the business level because we would save money.” Another cupboard revealed cases of granola bars and microwavable brown rice, an echo to Dri’s shopping habits. A low drawer had a cache of hundred-calorie snacks. She picked up a small puffy bag of Cheez-Its and handled it disdainfully. “Yeah, I was into these but they don’t work for me. I’m kind of an addictive personality so I can’t have just one. I can’t think of anything else until I have another bag.” She dropped it back into the drawer and quickly slammed it shut.
    Without a word, she moved on to the fridge. A gallon of some pink drink dominated the top shelf. “Yeah, my husband bought this. I didn’t want to throw it away, so I’ve been drinking it.” She looked at the label. “I mean, this looks bad. I know anything that ends in - ose is probably bad, or if the additive has an x in it.” She put it back.
    â€œThis is why I want to be educated, so that I can make better decisions.” She bought books on nutrition, but rarely made it past the first couple of chapters. “I buy a lot of cookbooks but I never really use them.” She’s made only one recipe from a book, a chicken dish from Fresh Food Fast by Cooking Light magazine. “I was disappointed that it was so bland. My chicken was too dry, and I don’t know why.”
    In the rest of the fridge, we found bricks of butter and a drawer devoted to an array of low-fat cheeses. A food chemist once described the process of making fat-free cheese as a complicated puzzle, one that typically required a lot of chemicals, gums, sugars, and added salt to solve. “Do you ever wonder what they do to make them low-fat?” I asked.
    She cocked her head to one side. “No, I guess I’ve never thought about it.”
    We moved on. There was a lot of packaged fruit, including some in small clear plastic containers. “Oh, yeah, I stopped eating the grapefruit since it doesn’t expire until next year. That kind of scared me. Isn’t fruit supposed to expire?” 10
    When she opened a crisper drawer, a putrid, vinegar-like odor escaped. She’d purchased a dozen apples in bulk, and half of them sat rotting in the bin. “I totally forgot about those.” Polite Donna looked visibly mortified. “My husband thinks that if you can get it cheaper in bulk, you should buy it even if you throw half of it away.”
    â€œBut you look upset,” Lisa said, training the small video camera on her.
    â€œI don’t have an opinion on it,” she replied. But then the color rose in her cheeks. She continued with the fridge tour. We discussed expired condiments and a rainbow of diet sodas. Then she discovered two browning heads of lettuce in another drawer. She clenched her jaw. She picked one up and examined it, not unlike Hamlet contemplating Yorick’s skull.
    â€œYou know, I grew up not having much food in our house,” she said, talking more to the head of lettuce than to us. “We went to a lot of food banks as a kid. For me to throw away food, that’s kind of sacrilegious. And, well, I work with starving kids in Africa.” Her voice ratcheted up an octave. She dropped the lettuce back into the bin. “So, yeah, it does bug me that we’re throwing food away as if it’s not important. That we’re wasting