"There's nothing in"

You open the fridge and there's nothing in, and this is true in the sense that there's nothing that looks like a dinner. What's usually in is half of things. It's what's not in that matters, and it's the same short list every time. An onion. A tin of tomatoes. Pasta or rice. Eggs. Something frozen and green. Cheese. Oil. Salt. With those in, there's always a dinner, and with those out, there isn't, whatever else the fridge holds.

The NHS Eatwell Guide, which is the government's picture of how a diet should balance out over a day or a week, says to base meals on starchy foods like potatoes, bread, rice or pasta, to have some beans, pulses, fish, eggs or meat, and to eat plenty of vegetables, and it says in so many words that fresh, frozen, tinned and dried all count. I mention that not because this is a diet book but because the belief that there's nothing in usually means there's nothing fresh in, and fresh isn't the test. A bag of frozen peas is a vegetable. A tin of chickpeas is protein. A jar of pesto and a bag of pasta is a dinner, and nobody will come round to check.

Fiona Lavelle and colleagues interviewed twenty-seven people in Ireland about what stopped them cooking with basic ingredients, and among the things that helped was the ability to plan and prepare ahead, and among the things that stopped them was the wish for meals that took no effort. "There's nothing in" is where those two meet. If nothing's been planned, the fridge is parts, and the effortless meal is the one on the app.

The shelf, in chapter 19, is the answer, and it's a boring one. It's the short list, kept in stock, bought once a week without deciding. With the shelf in, "there's nothing in" stops being true, because the shelf is always in. There's still the seven o'clock question, but it's a question with an answer in the cupboard, which is a different question from the one you've been asking.