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conversation on the air had appeared to touch a nerve. I glimpsed moments of guilt, embarrassment, and downright melancholy.
    â€œWhen I was nineteen, I was asked to make the salad at my boyfriend’s parents’ for Thanksgiving. I didn’t know where to start, and they all made fun of me. It made me never want to try to cook anything ever again,” wrote one woman.
    â€œI rely on boxed products because it’s easy, but I don’t want to. I have NO idea how to butcher anything. I can’t fillet a fish, cut up a chicken, etc. When I look at an artichoke . . . well, I just walk right on by,” wrote Cheryl, a thirty-three-year-old mother of two young sons. “I’d like to learn how to make ‘real’ food, more food from scratch and what I have on hand, rather than pulling out a frozen pizza for my family.”
    â€œMy mother never let me in the kitchen; she thought I was in the way,” wrote Shannon, thirty-two, also a mother of two. “When I read about little girls cooking side by side with their mothers . . . it makes me so sad for what I missed.”
    Another wrote, “I grew up with a grandmother that could make a meal out of nothing and make it taste as good as any five-star menu. I’ve lived for years on frozen dinners and anything that is easy or fast.” She considered herself “addicted” to cooking shows. She watched them all— Top Chef, Iron Chef, The Next Food Network Star, Alton Brown, Giada, Emeril. “But then I am totally lost when it comes to knowing what to do when I try to fix anything. I’ve watched Gordon Ramsey while eating Tuna Helper. I’m so ashamed.”
    In the end, I selected ten people for what I began to refer to simply as “The Project.” 8 They shared little in common in terms of background, except that they all identified themselves as a “poor cook” or an “aspiring cook” who relied regularly on processed or fast foods. I told them little about what to expect, other than a few dates and times. I wasn’t trying to be mysterious. I didn’t really have a plan.
    In retrospect, I’m not sure what I was thinking. I’m not an academic type or a researcher; I had taught only a couple of informal cooking classes. My thoughts on what lessons I’d teach were murky. I would have to make it all up as I went along.
    The first stop was a generic apartment building in the rustic former logging town of Granite Falls, Washington. After three hours, I climbed back into our Mini Cooper and leaned my head against the steering wheel. “What did I get myself into?”

CHAPTER 3
    The Secret Language of Kitchens
    LESSON HIGHLIGHTS:
    What Really Lurks in Cupboards, Fridges, and Freezers

SABRA
    â€œThis is what you call White Trash Garlic Bread,” announced Sabra, a lovely, fair-haired twenty-three-year-old young woman clad in a skin-tight blue shirt and strategically ripped jeans. “This is one of the few things that I learned about cooking from my mother.” She slathered one-half of a soft hamburger bun with Gold ’n Soft margarine, added a few hearty shakes of generic garlic salt, and topped it with dried Parmesan cheese from a can. After repeating the process with a half dozen buns, she slid the baking sheet into her immaculate white oven.
    Sabra was the first volunteer I met. She shared an apartment in a basic but pleasant complex with her boyfriend in a sleepy former lumber town an hour north of Seattle. Her standard-issue kitchen was small but tidy. In the living room, a tiny kitten she had rescued the day before took halting steps on the black leather sectional, her occasional mewing competing with the big flat-screen TV tuned to a poker tournament that Sabra wasn’t watching.
    While the buns lingered under the broiler, Sabra alternated between sips of Red Bull and peach schnapps mixed together in an orange plastic tumbler while waxing poetic about her