Kitchen Witch | Wednesday, August 30,2006

A vegan victory

A recipe for brownies that don’t taste like a mud hut brick

Deciding to be a vegan is like signing up for the armed forces. You’ve enlisted for service mysterious and unknown to many, your life will be regimented (and at times arduous), and dessert is ei

Kitchen Witch | Wednesday, August 23,2006

Hoorah for okra!

It’s slime time for your heart

By Kim O’Donnel

Amid the bounty of late-summer vegetables, there’s one that tends to get the short shrift, and her name is okra. In India she’s quite the lady’s finger, in parts of West Africa she&r

Kitchen Witch | Thursday, August 17,2006

Garlic-o-rama

The winning entry from the 2006 Gilroy Garlic Festival

By Kim O’Donnel

Rare is the opportunity to truly experience an ingredient and eat it several different ways in one sitting. Not only is it challenging to pull off for the cook, it can also be overwhelming for the eat

Kitchen Witch | Wednesday, August 2,2006

Lulu's blue cakes

Make your own healthy blueberry pancakes

By Kim O’Donnel

In another life, my name was Lulu. I worked as a waitress in a stainless-steel diner in Philadelphia, manning a 20-seat counter that required the nerves of an air traffic controller and the wit of a s

Kitchen Witch | Wednesday, July 26,2006

Summer Rolls on

The results are personal, politically correct and scrumptious

By Kim O’Donnel

Have you tried to host a dinner party lately? Long gone is the no-nonsense process of entertaining, when the only thing that mattered was a wholesome square meal consisting of a meat, a starch, and a

Kitchen Witch | Wednesday, July 19,2006

Taming the tricky eggplant

She’s a real looker, but be careful or she’ll taste like cardboard

By Kim O’Donnel

Of the seemingly infinite possibilities at summer produce stands, the eggplant is among the trickiest. She’s a real looker, all right, showing off her shiny, buxom bosom that comes in shades of

Kitchen Witch | Wednesday, July 12,2006

All thanks to Mr. Ice Cream

It doesn’t take much to make a flavor-cream bomb

By Kim O’Donnel

Blood orange and burnt caramel, crème fraîche and Meyer lemon, brandy-macerated peach. These were the ice cream flavors I had come to hear about over the phone with my friend, t

Kitchen Witch | Thursday, July 6,2006

Rum means more fun

Summer is all about cocktails and here are a few favorites

By Kim O’Donnel

Nine months of the year, I’m a wine drinker, with an occasional foray into Bourbon-Nightcap Land. But when sultry breezes, late sunsets, and humidity come to town, my beverage choices

Kitchen Witch | Thursday, June 29,2006

Summer on a stick

Try Vietnamese-style chicken thighs and never leave your Tiki hut

By Kim O’Donnel

Modern-day calendar-keepers may tell us that summer begins with Memorial Day weekend, but if you’re an astronomical diehard you know it really didn’t kick off until June 21, when the sun w

Kitchen Witch | Thursday, June 22,2006

Cooking for the cook

Guess who’s a pain in the ass?

By Kim O’Donnel

Cooks are a pain in the ass to cook for. I should know — I’m one of them. Friends tell me all the time that even the thought of cooking for me is intimidating, and I have