The Kitchen Counter Cooking School: How a Few Simple Lessons Transformed Nine Culinary Novices into Fearless Home Cooks Paperback – September 25, 2012

I have been cooking for many, many years. I have children, grandchildren and now a great grandchild! I have cooked for everyone and I thought I knew a lot about cooking.However, as I went through this book, I learned so many things I have done wrong all my life - such as keeping too much food in the refrigerator and pantry. There is only two of us now and we do have a busy life so I guess as Kathleen says, "I buy for the life I inspire to have rather than my real life."I used to end up with wilted romaine, yellow broccoli with flowers, and limp celery too often. After reading the book, I have changed my buying habits - I shop more often and buy less produce at a time. So far I have wasted nothing and I feel so proud.I even put a photo at the back of my fridge which I can always see - so my fridge isn't stuffed any more. Sometimes it looks even a little bare but there is no waste.I also learned to taste all kinds of canned goods - what a difference in canned beans when I was making chili. I even threw out one can - it was that bad. Some store brands are better than others but sometimes you have to go with the name brand for taste and texture.I have been practicing my knife skills too and I chop things so much faster now. I like showing that off to my hubby (who doesn't cook at all by the way).My pantry is getting bare but that's okay - I know everything I have and I am sure nothing is out of date.The bonus is I have saved a lot of money at the grocery store and I like that. I make all my own salad dressings now and that is great fun and a real saving.You're never too old to learn new tricks in the kitchen.This book is not only a great read - it is life changing! I loved it.

I ran across this book a few years ago, and I've since given a copy to each of my kids as they've moved out. This book has very few "true" recipes...the purpose is to teach the reader basic skills (cutting up a chicken, making a vinaigrette, etc), and then show them all the possibilities now that they have those basic skills. For instance, what are some different ideas for seasoning that chicken you just cut up? The book is written almost as a memoir of a weeks-long cooking class the author gave to a group of people who were unsure of their cooking abilities; it is interesting to read, and also very informative. I am an experienced and confident cook, yet I still learn something more each time I read it.

As someone who always takes a gander at what other people are purchasing at the grocery store, I was pretty much hooked from the kindle sample where the author stalks and accosts a woman at the store because her cart is full of packaged processed foods that, while being less healthy, would end up being much more expensive than making the same foods from real ingredients. She shows the woman how buying a whole chicken and butchering it is less expensive than buying just the breast meat and helps her swap out some items, giving her some simple recipes to follow.I think the book may have been more colorful and entertaining if Kathleen Flinn continued on in this appalled way with a fair amount of hectoring factored in, but she's way too nice and gentle for that. I didn't find her judgmental or condescending at all. Still, the book did not disappoint and I thought it was a page turner oddly enough in that she selects 9 other women to help and you really want these women to do well. In terms of the cooking school, their progress and their bland comments kind of blend into one another, but the introductions for most of them are interesting in that they represent a wide range of socioeconomic backgrounds as well as cooking aspirations. One woman is perfectly happy with McDonald's and powder cheese on an English muffin but has been coerced into the project for health reasons, while others purchase lovely produce from farmers' markets, which they let wither in the fridge, not knowing what to do with it. Some cook for large families on a budget and some find it hard to be motivated to cook for one. If you want to cook more than you do, you are going to relate to one or another of the issues that Flinn brings to light.The cooking lessons are well thought out and each culminates with a classic recipe that can be tweaked to your tastes. All these basic recipes--the ratio for vinaigrettes, roast chicken, no-knead bread, fish baked in parchment paper--can be found online dozens of times over, but it's nice to have it all in one place in its most simple form, plus she provides optional flavor combinations that I found useful, promoting the idea that cooking ought to be a free-ranging expression of skill, habit, and what happens to be in your pantry, not some painstaking endeavor where you have to measure everything out and constantly refer to a detailed recipe out of fear of getting one step wrong--which is usually how I cook. This book opens you up to experimentation and failure on a small scale. After all, if you cook every day, one mediocre meal is not going to make or break you.It also inspired me to use everything I buy. So much is wasted out of misguided aspiration or just bad organization. She espouses purchasing better quality ingredients at a higher cost, but if you aren't wasting anything, it probably evens out. There is a fair amount of food politics and if you're aware of Michael Pollan and every other food persona who writes of sourcing your food, there is nothing new here. But thankfully, she keeps those parts short and credits everyone suitably. I also thought, like another reviewer, that she needn't have gone into a narrative about her Mediterranean cruise--it made it seem like the book was a chronological narrative about this time in her life when I think the better book is a more tightly focused one on these women she decided to help--and the homes they keep (so voyeuristic!). Too bad the lone man dropped out.