Read The Kitchen Counter Cooking School for Free Online Page A

favorite food. “I love Gold ’n Soft,” she said, holding up the half-full one-pound plastic tub of margarine. “If it had Gold ’n Soft in it, that’s what my mother and I ate growing up. Now pretty much everything I eat has Gold ’n Soft in it. Anything else, especially butter, just doesn’t taste right.”
    The “garlic bread,” combined with Stouffer’s five-cheese lasagna, straight from thirteen minutes in the microwave, constituted her lunch. As the microwave counted down, she and I finished the inventory of her cabinets, freezer, and fridge. Among the goods: nine varieties of Stouffer’s frozen dinners, six boxes of Hamburger Helper, a five-pack of mac and cheese, half a case of Cup Noodles, and the remainder of a case of Red Bull, all of it from a recent warehouse-store haul. Sabra and her boyfriend dedicated the rest of the pantry to an impressive liquor assortment that featured thirty-eight bottles, everything from bitters to vodka and five varieties of schnapps.
    In the fridge, newly purchased bundles of broccoli and cauliflower filled the crisper drawers to capacity, a change for her. A recent pap test found precancerous cells, curable but a worrying sign that she inherited a familial propensity for cancer. A doctor suggested Sabra overhaul her diet to include more fruits and vegetables. “We found a fruit stand near here, and it’s cheap. We got three pounds of cauliflower for three dollars,” she said. “I couldn’t get Cheetos that cheap.”
    Sabra was nominated for the project by her stepmother, my friend Lisa, a culinary school graduate, a part-time chef, and the kind of woman who routinely makes her own mayonnaise. Back in 2006, I decided to hire someone to help test recipes for my first book. I put an ad on Craigslist describing appalling pay and erratic hours. Within twenty-four hours, eighty-five people had applied. Many sent résumés and long pleas for the position. Lisa had assumed that I was a man and responded with a snarky “Is this a dream job or are you looking for a date?” When we met, the intense, briny smell of cheese preceded her. She walked into my office and handed me a bag. “My mom owns a cheese shop. If you hire me, there’s more where this came from.”
    Lisa quickly became one of my best friends. She tested recipes, helped me organize various events, and Mike insisted she play Clinton Kelly from What Not to Wear when I went shopping for clothes to wear on book tours. (“You want jewel tones, no pencil skirts, and at least two pairs of Spanx.”) When I told her about the project she said, “That sounds like a ton of work. If you’re really going to do it, I’m all in.”
    Over the years as we worked together, Lisa relayed stories of frustration in terms of food as it related to her relationship with Sabra. When she married her husband in her early twenties, he had primary custody of Sabra, then six years old. When Sabra was a child, Lisa would make dinner, such as roast chicken with vegetables and a salad. Sabra would sit back in her chair with her little arms crossed over her chest and refuse to touch it. After rejecting dinner, Sabra would run from the table to call her mother, who lived less than a mile away. Lisa would overhear the litany of complaints about the fare Sabra said she’d been served. Invariably, they’d hear a honk from the driveway minutes later—it was Sabra’s mother, there to take her to McDonald’s.
    After a couple of years of this, Lisa bought a case of ramen noodles. If Sabra didn’t want what she made for dinner, fine. But no more McDonald’s, not for dinner. Sabra could eat ramen instead, which she liked, but she had to make it herself. After four nights of noodles, Sabra started eating dinner with them again.
    I asked Sabra about all of this, and she nodded, taking another long pull on her drink. “Oh, yeah, I