Kim O’Donnel

Untitled Document Cupid left a voice mail last night. With the annual archery tournament in just a few days, he wanted to check in: Would I be needing any extra assistance this year? A bow-polishing, perhaps? A prompt response would be appreciated, for his travel schedule is jam-packed with visits to nervous archers whose aim […]

Untitled Document I know little about the upcoming football showdown (it’s in Miami, correct?), and, frankly, I don’t care. What’s important is the need for superior snacks for a marathon session in front of the television. Movie-awards buffs will need similar sustenance just a few weeks later for the Academy Awards. For inspiration, I turn […]

Untitled Document I’ve long subscribed to the notion that winter is an ice-cream-free zone. Even when snow fails to make an appearance or the temperature feels more like spring, winter is dark — and darkness makes us turn inward. We fold up the patio furniture and retreat indoors. We brood over bowls of broth and […]

Untitled Document Just a few days ago, the news from your neighborhood climatologist might have suggested there’s really something to that global warming thing. Take the first Saturday of January, when temperatures climbed into the low 70s in the Northeast — where the weather is supposed to be . . . well, you know what […]

Untitled Document There’s a line from a John Lennon song that sums up a recent attempt to fix dinner: “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” The plan: turkey chili. I had envisioned a low-maintenance evening, spending about an hour with some canned white beans and seasoned ground turkey. Inspired […]

Untitled Document If cheese sauce is all you’ve ever had in the way of broccoli and its kissing cousin, cauliflower, then we need to talk. It is hard to mention one without the other, given the popularity of the newfangled hybrid Broccoflower, plus cauliflower is available not just in traditional virgin snow white but in […]

Lately, life at my house has been a roller coaster. Family duties of an intensive-care-unit variety have sucked me in and sucked me dry. When I finally did get some down time, the last thing I wanted to do was exert more energy to cook. Instead, I gravitated in the direction of carryout menus and […]

When Christmas came to town, there were a few things I could count on: Santa (I kept the fantasy going until I was 10), Fritos in my stocking, and my father’s private stash of chocolate-chip cookies. Presented inside a foil-lined department-store gift box that was clad in Christmas-themed paper, the cookies were an annual gift […]

Mexican-cooking diva Zarela Martinez cooks with it. Your grandma, too. Food writer Nina Planck sings its nutritional praises. I’m talking about lard, the rendered fat of a pig that’s coming back into culinary vogue. Shunned by low-fat cheerleaders for nearly a generation, lard is earning some newfound respect in the kitchen. As a member of […]

Like most patriotic Americans, I love a mountain of mashed potatoes, swimming in a pool of gravy, mingling with the other goodies on my plate. But this year I’m ready to move beyond Norman Rockwell’s continent and travel to the other America where the potato got its start. I’m talking about Peru. Along with quinoa […]

Whether we travel or stay at home, this week is the busiest week of the year — for one meal. We scurry through airports, plow through interstates and push our way through supermarket aisles, just to break bread (or a turkey wishbone) with loved ones. The anxiety is high, the lines are long, and the […]

Untitled Document Thanksgiving as a self-contained concept is a beautiful thing. We cook; we travel over the river and through the woods. We gather at table, we give thanks, and, ultimately, we eat too much. That’s fine. I love every minute. The problem is this: Thanksgiving is no longer a glorious eating event unto itself. […]