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 vegetable. These days, forget about planning a menu without consulting your guests. The world of the privileged has become […]

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 majestic purple, light green, or ecru. “It’s so gorgeous, I just have to get one,” is a line I’ve heard at the farmers’ […]

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, the former pastry chef-turned-restaurant critic (and my former editor). He’d rattle them off nonchalantly, as if I knew what he was talking about, and surely […]

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 veer from the cerebral to the coquettish. Summer sipping is all about cocktails, and in my opinion that means rum. Sure, I know the school […]

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 was at its highest point in the sky. The day was long, the night was short, and some of earthlings acted crazy. If you […]

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 been naïve enough to believe that my expertise is the barrier between me and those dinner invitations. Yeah, […]

It really was my fault, but I blame it on the potato. Preparations for a Memorial Day get-together with friends were sailing along. I was embroiled in side-dish duty and dessert detail; he was working on a rack of ribs. We were both in a kitchen groove, staying out of each other’s way, listening to […]

Every May, there’s a big homecoming in Alaska, and everyone and his mother in the lower 48 wants an invitation. From now until the kids go back to school, the cold waters of the Copper River are chockfull of returning salmon preparing for their upstream spawning and egg-laying ritual. Meanwhile, we mere mortals in places […]

As summer makes its debut, cowboy wannabes across America are pulling out their grills, great and small, for a season of smoke, fire, and, alas, the same old underwhelming steaks. Why must we turn to the same cuts of cow every time? To paraphrase my pal Ralph Waldo Emerson, foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of […]

It was the summer of 1988, and it was stinking hot in Philadelphia. My pal El and I were brand-spanking-new college graduates and had no idea what we wanted to be when we grew up. Although we both were working in the food biz — she as a waitress, I as a gourmet-shop cashier — […]