“HOW do you cook salmon?”

My niece had been at university a couple of weeks when she phoned her mum to ask the above. Half an hour later she texted: “Salmon burnt. Having cereals for tea. PS How do you use Toilet Duck?”

Not that it requires much effort to cook, but salmon is perhaps a bit ambitious for student fodder. I think I lived on muesli, cheese pasties, tinned tomatoes and dehydrated soya mince throughout my university days. And, to be honest, the contents of my kitchen cupboards haven’t really moved on, three decades later.

Anyone who has ever joined a slimming group - and since there’s one on practically every street corner these days that must be pretty much everyone - will know that the key to healthy eating is organised food shopping. Plan your meals in advance, they say, shop ahead and make sure you have a plentiful supply of “store cupboard staples”.

When I Googled store cupboard staples, the first thing I came across was a guide to flatpack furniture - quite literally staples for cupboards. But a quick scroll down revealed the rolling store of essentials we should have in our kitchens; mainly stock cubes, black pepper, olive oil, Worcestershire Sauce, balsamic vinegar, spices and pesto. I have all these in my cupboards (apart from pesto which, like black olives, remains one of those things I only pretend to like in public) but, and there’s the rub, I don’t really do much with any of them.

According to a food blogger who appears to live by the mantra “What would Jamie Oliver do?’ your store cupboard essentials should be anything you can use to whip up a stew, a soup or a sauce at short notice. These include pulses and beans, coconut milk, tinned tuna or sardines - “Great for fishcakes,” says the blogger. “Great for feeding the cat when you’ve run out of catfood and can’t be bothered to go to the Co-op” say I - rice, dried noodles, “good quality anchovies”, mustard, honey, porridge oats, flour, couscous, seeds, capers, dried yeast, cocoa powder, tumeric, ground ginger, fennel seeds, tabasco, baking powder and toasted sesame oil. I don’t even know what toasted sesame oil is.

Apart from the obvious things like pepper and oil, my store cupboard staples largely consist of brown sauce, Marmite, pasta shells, two tins of kidney beans, a family-size pack of Mini Cheddars and several spice jars that are so old their lids are covered in a sticky layer of dust. I only use oregano. I don’t think the seal has been broken on the paprika jar.

My fridge is currently home to a jar of pickled onions, a half-empty bottle of lime squash, a can of cider and three tomatoes.

The first time my boyfriend came to stay I tried to give the impression I could rustle up a fabulous meal without breaking a sweat. I casually laid a butternut squash on a chopping board and went to the effort of filling my kitchen cupboards with exotic jars and bottles. The contents of my fridge looked like I shopped at the kind of mews terrace Italian deli Nigella probably uses.

Since my chap's culinary skills don't extend much further than scrambled egg, I doubt he even noticed the pumpkin seeds, fresh jalapenos, capers and bay leaves dotted around my kitchen. I could've emptied a tinned steak and kidney pud onto his plate and he'd have believed it was homemade.

Now I know he has no interest in my kitchen cupboards, I don't have to keep them stocked with stuff I'll never use. And I've managed to keep up the pretence of being a decent cook, using smoke and mirrors (and packet sauces).

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