Former Washington Post food blogger Kim O’Donnel would like everyone to get a little pickled this weekend. Or canned. Whichever.

O’Donnel is the founder of Canning Across America, which, according to its Web site, “is a nationwide, ad hoc collective of cooks, gardeners and food lovers committed to the revival of the lost art of ‘putting up’ food. Our goal is to promote safe food preservation and the joys of community building through food.”

CAA’s first big push is this weekend, when cities across America will host classes, demos, and canning parties to introduce this old form of food preservation to a new generation. It’s a smart move, not only because it can save cash-strapped families real money during this recession but because it cuts down on the massive amount of food waste in our county (which may be a sin after all).

At present there are no events for the D.C. area, but there are a couple this weekend in Philly. But maybe some of you out there will decide to host informal canning parties this weekend?

The full CAA press release is after the jump.

Read More “Join the Canning Revolution” »

During a week in which when we learned that the D.C. area had placed not one but two toques on the upcoming season of Top Chef, I’m pleased to report that Y&H readers were far more interested in the closing of an icon, Nathans in Georgetown. We are not, it seems, complete tools of the reality TV industry.

In fact, the second most-read item this week concerned food stamps at farmers markets. I’d say all this fall-of-the-American-empire talk is way premature.

The most-read blog posts of the week:

1. Breaking News: Nathans in Georgetown Is Closing
2. FRESHFARM to Double Value of Food Stamps to Break the Yuppie Stranglehold on Farmers Markets
3. Food Blogger Kim O’Donnel Is Leaving WaPo for True/Slant
4. A Tale of Two White House Gardens: Toxic or Not?
5. Young & Hungry Dining Guide by the Day: Granville Moore’s
   

In March, the Washington Post pulled the plug on Kim O’Donnel’s long-time chat, What’s Cooking. Today, O’Donnel announced on her daily Post food blog that she herself is pulling the plug on A Mighty Appetite, effective on Friday.

The announcement officially ends O’Donnel’s 12-year run at the Post, the last three as the Mighty Appetite blogger.

The veteran food writer, now based in Seattle, won’t be without a home for long, however. On Wednesday, July 15, O’Donnel will launch her new column/blog, “Licking Your Chops,” on the online start-up, True/Slant, an innovative media business in which “Entrepreneurial Journalists” can brand themselves and drum up advertisers to sponsor their work (for which the writers receive a cut of the revenue).

O’Donnel is interested in the branding side of True/Slant more than the self-marketing side. In fact, she doesn’t plan to sell advertisers on her work. She instead will earn a stipend, which she labels a “big pay cut.”

The branding side of the equation is important to O’Donnel as she expands her freelance empire. She’s already hosting a new cooking chat at Culinate.com, and she’s close to signing a deal to publish her debut cookbook, which she describes as a “meatless guide for meat lovers.” It’ll include 52 separate meat-free menus, one for each week, so that “Mr. and Mrs. Sausage [can] take a pass one day a week,” she tells Y&H. It’s based on O’Donnel’s Meatless Monday series, which she launched last fall.

Read More “Food Blogger Kim O’Donnel Is Leaving WaPo for True/Slant” »

If you want two more reasons why the dinosaurs known as Old Media are going extinct, you can just look at the Post’s and the City Paper’s online food coverage. For years, both papers were mostly satisfied to republish their print material on the Web — with, perhaps, an online slide show! — and call it a day. It was only late last year that we at Young & Hungry launched a blog.

But, hey, at least we beat the Post. The paper’s crack Food section just debuted its own blog…today.

The All Eat Can Eat blog came out of the gate strong, however. It featured a Q&A with Spike Mendelsohn about his new Web TV cooking show, a witty take on the Scan It! device at Giant supermarkets, and the First Garden’s First Supper, among other items.

Y&H asked editor Joe Yonan if he’d take a few e-mail questions about the blog. Our Q&A is after the jump.

Read More “Post Food Section Lanches Its Own Blog. Finally.” »

A couple of Y&H’s favorite foodies, Kim O’Donnel at A Mighty Appetite and Lynne Rossetto Kasper from The Splendid Table, have been harrumphing recently about the sexist connotation of “gastrosexual,” a word that practically has more definitions than “set” or “run” or “dick” (small “d” version). The definition that has these fine foodies up in arms is this one, according to Urban Dictionary, that OED of the online word:

“Gastrosexual Men who use their culinary skills to impress their friends and potential love interests.” (Don’t ask Y&H why this word is capitalized, as if it were the proper name of a department store where men could shop for all their gastrosexual needs.)

The definition they downplay, however, is the more telling one:

Read More “Gastrosexuals Are the New Metrosexuals” »

Or back online. Whatever the case, Kim O’Donnel, former host of the ‘What’s Cooking’ chat on washingtonpost.com, will start dropping knowledge (god, I’m so dated) now at Culinate.com. Her debut is today at 1 p.m. EDT.

Since unceremoniously losing her post.com gig last month, O’Donnel had been hosting a makeshift chat on facebook for the most die-hard of her fans. The Culinate site should make it easier again for O’Donnel to interface (didn’t I say I was dated?) with home cooks who need a little help in the kitchen. For starters, they won’t need a facebook account (although, really, with 200 million members, doesn’t everyone have an account now?). Second, Culinate will alert you to O’Donnel’s weekly chats—for the price of your personal e-mail.

Read More “O’Donnel Is Back on the Air Today with ‘Table Talk’” »

Well, that didn’t take long.

On Tuesday, Kim O’Donnel hosted her final What’s Cooking chat for washingtonpost.com, drawing a number of cries and exclamations from home cooks who had come to rely on her culinary expertise for the past ten years. Today, O’Donnel told Y&H that her chat will be renamed and relaunched next month: Table Talk will debut at 1 p.m. EDT on Thursday, April 9, on Culinate.com.

Culinate is a privately owned site, based in Portland, Ore., with a wealth of food-related content, from basic recipes to interviews to buying guides and beyond. O’Donnel did a freelance piece for the site last summer and found herself attracted to its work. “I was just admiring from afar what they were doing,” O’Donnel says. “It’s kind of a perfect fit.”

Read More “Kim O’Donnel’s Cooking Chat Resurfaces at Culinate.com” »

Earlier this week, Kim O’Donnel hosted her final “What’s Cooking” chat over at washingtonpost.com, ending what has to be one of the longest-running online discussions anywhere. O’Donnel, a journalist and a graduate of the Institute of Culinary Education in New York, had been hosting her home-cooking chat for more than 10 years, but the popular forum fell victim to the latest round of budget cuts at the paper.

While she’s not bitter about having the plug pulled, O’Donnel is perplexed as to why the Post, at a critical time for journalism when its very survival lies with the Web, would “start packing away unique online assets.” (What’s Cooking is not the only chat to go bye-bye at the Post, and Y&H is searching for an editor at the paper who can answer O’Donnel’s question, among others; I’ll update this item as answers come in.)

Even if O’Donnel doesn’t completely understand the paper’s rationale for cutting back on chats, she’s happy with the legacy of What’s Cooking. “A lot of people learned to cook in this forum,” she says. She politely declines to provide statistics on the number of weekly readers and chatters, though she did get about 100 questions a week.

Read More “O’Donnel’s ‘What’s Cooking’ Chat Is Toast” »