Last year, when former Washington Post food blogger and current USA Today contributor Kim O'Donnel toured the country to promote her recent book, The Meat Lover's Cookbook: Vegetarian Recipes Carnivores Will Devour (a follow-up is now in the works), she made a stop at the Dupont Circle baguette and brewski emporium.

For the book signing, O'Donnel whipped up a batch of her Chickpea "Crab Cakes." Management liked the things so much that the venue has since adapted the recipe and made it its own. 

"We've changed it up [from O'Donell's original]," says owner Teri Van Goethem. "The first time we made it was her recipe," she notes. But later Bread and Brew added more Old Bay and garlic. Sometimes it has capers.

I found the the chickpea patties to be quite rich, and dare I say, tastier than even the real crab cake I tasted recently at Stoney's on Broomes Island. Flecked with cilantro and kicky with cayenne pepper, Bread and Brew's sliders satisfied the sandwich lover in me. Unfortunately, my patties arrived without any sauce.

Van Goethem says a Veganaise-based tartar sauce usually adorns the chickpeas, but the kitchen does it "different ways at different times." It's a shame that mine didn't come with the sauce, as I slathered a creamy Dijon in its place. A girl can't eat a dry sandwich, ya know.

As the menu changes frequently, it's best to call ahead to make sure the vegan cake is on the menu. It appears often as one of B&B's "Meatless Monday" options; and if you do make it there on that dreaded day of the week, take advantage of the daily special $5 selected cocktails from 4 p.m. to 8pm.

Photo by Stefanie Gans

Quick hits on the meatless beat

We're Number One! LivingSocial, the D.C.-based daily deals site, surveyed 20 major cities and concluded that D.C.'s "preference" for vegetarian and vegan restaurants ranks number one.  Although a closer look at the data reveals that our "high" veg-status remains low overall compared to other tastes: eight percent described their eating habits as meatless, whereas 39 percent would say they were "experimental" and 38 percent adorned the title "meal lover."  On a national level, five percent chose the vegetarian/vegan label.

Bhide in her home kitchen

Former Washington Post writer and blogger Kim O'Donnel recently struck a deal to write a bi-monthly column for USA Today, the Family Kitchen, which will debut Nov. 10 in the national newspaper.

Not to be outdone, last month local food writer and cookbook author Monica Bhide launched a weekly column, Seasonings, through the Scripps Howard News Service, which distributes content to hundreds of papers nationwide. As the title implies, Bhide focuses on a spice, herb, or seasoning each week and provides a recipe featuring the ingredient. She already has four columns under her belt, including a recent one on cinnamon.

Bhide landed the column not long after she hosted a Smithsonian food writing seminar in September. (Disclaimer: I was part of her panel, though no one asked me to write a nationally syndicated column afterward.)

"A reporter from Scripps attended my Smithsonian seminar on food writing and went back and told her boss. He contacted me," Bhide e-mailed me.

She followed it with the emoticon: 

As for O'Donnel, Family Kitchen will appear twice a month on Wednesdays in USA Today's new Health section.

"Every day has a different theme, and Wed is Nourish day," e-mails O'Donnel, who recently released The Meat Lover's Meatless Cookbook. The "column will cover the many issues I've been writing about — child nutrition, school lunch, food safety, tracing the origins of our food & how it's grown & raised — but mostly I see this as a mission to inspire folks to get back into the kitchen and cook for themselves and their families."

O'Donnel notes there will be one recipe per month as well as "tips & tricks, seasoned with the KOD touch."

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

First up is the debut of The Meat Lover's Meatless Cookbook, a recipe collection from Seattle-based food writer Kim O'Donnel, who first dipped her tasting spoon into the world of vegetarian cooking with her Meatless Monday feature on the A Mighty Appetite blog on washingtonpost.com. After 12 years at the Post, O'Donnel left the paper last year to, among other things, focus on the Meat Lover's Meatless Cookbook, which officially hit stores yesterday.

It's a home cook-friendly project, both approachable and cautiously adventurous, with recipes like O'Donnel's meatless take on cassoulet (!) in which beans take center stage or her Maryland crab cake in which chickpeas stand in for the famous Chesapeake crustacean. The book is broken down by seasons.

"It wasn't hard to eat meatless once or even thrice a week, but committing to it week in, week out, well that was a different story," O'Donnel e-mails me, in advance of her trip to the District next week to promote the book. "It really took the involvement of my WP blog readers to keep me honest, as I tested a new recipe every week for the meatless feature. The great revelation for both me and my husband was how interesting and diverse meatless eating and cooking could be, how eating this way was a gateway to the cuisines of the world. Indian, Thai, Lebanese, Caribbean, Italian, for starters."

O'Donnel isn't an evangelist here — well, maybe she is, but she's not an annoying one who assumes a moral high ground over her creeping vegetarianism. She's an avowed meat eater, in fact, one who understands the benefits of occasionally passing on the animal  proteins. "Most of us meat lovers, this one included, know we could stand to lower our cholesterol and drop a few pounds," O'Donnel writes in her intro. "Our problem isn't believing the data, it's the fear of change and the threat to our very personal relationship with food."

O'Donnel makes the gradual shift to vegetarianism easy.

If Post spirits writer Jason Wilson has any mission with his forthcoming book, Boozehound, due out Sept. 21, it's to inject some intellectual rigor into a form of journalism too often drunk on its own superficial prose. Check out this small excerpt on absinthe and the media's bipolar treatment of the spirit, first deifying it, then demonizing it:

As I observed this phenomenon, I thought, 'Well, duh.' Americans mostly don’t like the taste of licorice. Absinthe is flavored with anise, giving it a strong licorice taste. These two basic truths pretty much ensured that the spirit would never be enduringly popular in the United States. So presenting the sleight-of-hand notion that absinthe was ever 'cool' before being reported as 'uncool'—essentially hyping absinthe, then twelve months later calling it overhyped—is breathtakingly shallow even by the usual standards of lifestyle journalism. It smacks of high school.

Then again, as Wilson noted to me recently, he doesn't take writing about booze too seriously:

"I hope Boozehound gives a sense of how dynamic and exciting the world of spirits and cocktails has become over just the past few years. Still, it's important to remember not to take cocktails too seriously. I think learning about and understanding spirits provides an interesting way to think about culture, social history, fashion, trends, etc. But, I mean, we're talking about bartending...not curing cancer. I hope this book reminds people that drinks and drinking are, above all, fun."

No one, let alone me, needs to tell you about Joan Nathan's importance to the world of Jewish cooking. The D.C.-based writer has been thinking deeply on the subject for decades, back when some of us (well, me) were still trying to work through the narrative complexities of Elton John. Nathan has covered Jewish cooking from many different perspectives, but until her new cookbook hits shelves in late October, she had never surveyed the Jewish cooking in France.

Quiches, Kugels, and Couscous: My Search for Jewish Cooking in France is exactly what it says. I've been flipping through the uncorrected proof for a couple of weeks now and have been impressed with the stories Nathan has collected — the painstaking lengths to which Paul Bocuse went to cook kosher or the painstaking lengths to which French chateaus go to produce kosher wine, or even the pain-in-the-butt prayers that once had to be recited before you could eat dill.

"Dill is such an important flavor in Jewish cooking that the French eleventh-century Biblical commentator and Talmudic scholar Rashi wrote that if dill is used for flavor, a special blessing over the earth must be recited before tasting it. If, however, it is simply added to decorate the dish, it is not intended for food value, so just a general prayer over food must be recited."

So you might be asking yourself the same question I asked while reading Nathan's book: How is Jewish cooking different in France from, say, the United States? Here's her response to me, via e-mail:

"Jews have been cooking in France almost 2,000 years. As Jewish food is geographical, there is French Jewish provencal, Alsatian, Southwestern, Eastern European, and North African food. That said, the food differs from American Jewish food in that American food generally is more packaged and Jews have bought into this "progress" from the Industrial Age. So American Jewish food has become Americanized. Take processed cream cheese in cheese cake. In France, a cheese cake is closer to its European roots, using farmers cheese as it has been made for ages."

In Round One of this Mother's Day exercise, Y&H focused mostly on chefs. This time around, two restaurateurs and a food writer discuss the influence their mums had on their career choice. Or didn't.

Former WaPo food writer Kim O'Donnel:

I didn't learn to cook from my mom who had 3 kids at 28 in 1971 and who was mesmerized by the marvels of instant mashed potatoes and Steak-umms. PopTarts for breakfast, anyone?

That said, Mom taught me how to color outside the lines and appreciate color, texture, and how not to make a pot of coffee.

Restaurateur Jackie Greenbaum, who co-owns Jackie's and Quarry House in Silver Spring:

My mother was one of 8 girls, poor, Italian, and raised near Lincoln Park in DC. She was a great cook. Above all she taught me to be picky about ingredients, to cook simply and boldly, and to never under season. I grew up in Wheaton and remember her weekly ritual of stopping by Marchone's to pick up freshly grated Romano cheese, homemade sausages, etc. Her repertoire also included DC "country" cooking, which I relished. Outside of the occasional trip to Parkway Deli for lox, eggs and onions (I'm Jewish, too), our family Sunday breakfast was the same every week: fried green tomatoes, eggs basted in bacon fat over onions sauteed in bacon fat, hash browns, bacon, sausage patties, and a stack of Wonder bread toasted and buttered about 12 slices high on a plate.

One last anecdote that has served me throughout my lifetime. She confessed to me once that she learned how to modify many of her best recipes to be cooked in no more than 30 minutes so that when my dad came home from work he would think she had slaved over the stove all day when in fact she'd been at the golf course.

Matt Ashburn, co-owner of Capital City Diner:

Some of my fondest memories are of large family meals in southern Virginia, where everyone got together for the holidays to socialize, reflect, and enjoy each other's company over a plate of comfort food. Mom and grandma both cook honest-to-goodness southern dishes, usually from scratch (especially grandma), and we try to feature some of those styles at Capital City Diner. From homemade meatloaf to grilled pork chops to Dixie-style slaw dogs to seasoned collard greens, we take great effort to prepare good home-cooked meals...Just like mom (and grandma) would.

A good number of our recipes are, in fact, family recipes that we have adapted for the restaurant. The best example is Pat's mom's meatloaf, which has become the most popular dinner platter we serve.

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

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.

SEATTLE, WA. (August 26, 2009) –

Can we have a show of hands, I mean cans? Seattle’s in the house. So are Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago and Freeport, Maine!

Home canners, preservers and picklers are gathering ‘round the canning kettle this weekend in a unified effort to celebrate the art of “putting up” food. Leading these efforts is Canning Across America (CAA), a nationwide collective of cooks, gardeners and food lovers committed to the revival of food preservation, doing it safely and celebrating the joys of community building through food.

This weekend, Aug. 29-30, is CAA’s coast-to-coast kickoff, with how-to demos, classes and home canning parties in and around Seattle, where the project was conceived. Simultaneous community-based events are scheduled in Philadelphia, Chicago, Boston (home to a “Can-a-rama Can-tacular”) and Freeport Maine. From Alfred Station, N.Y. to Willmar, Minn., home canners are stocking up on jars and organizing their own canning parties, as the summer growing season nears its peak.

Cookware retailer Sur La Table has lent its support with an online discount Aug. 27-31, and book publishers, such as Sasquatch and Ten Speed Press have donated canning-specific titles, including “Jam It, Pickle It, Cure It” by Karen Solomon and “Canning and Preserving Your Own Harvest” by Carla Emery and Lorene Forkner-Edwards.

Nationally, CAA’s ranks are growing; contributors and supporters include chef John Besh, Noah Sheetz of the NY Governor’s Mansion and food writers Janet Fletcher, Tessa Kiros, Karen Solomon, Sarah Gilbert, Sherri Brooks Vinton and Eugenia Bone.

Lynne Rossetto Kasper, host of public radio program “The Splendid Table” recently said to CAA founder Kim O’Donnel that it sounds like “you’ve started a revolution.”

“No, Lynne,” O’Donnel replied. “It’s more like a Canvolution.”

For more information, visit Canning Across America: www.canningacrossamerica.com

Twitter.com/canvolution

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
   

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.

So what does this have to do with O'Donnel leaving the Post? Well, it seems that, as part of O'Donnel's arrangement with the paper, she couldn't promote her work in other media. True/Slant has no such qualms.

"I've found a new partner who is very happy to do that kind of stuff," O'Donnel says. "I really want to grow. I was looking for a partner to help me do that."

But there were other issues in writing A Mighty Appetite, O'Donnel notes. Its daily updates required a ton of time, despite the fact she was paid as a part-timer, and the column didn't get much promotion on the Post's home page, which meant it was often buried deep within the site.

O'Donnel will have to pay a price, at least at first, for more control over her content and its promotion. She'll sacrifice page views. She says that a Mighty Appetite drew between 100,000-140,000 page views per month. She knows that she won't match those numbers at True/Slant, at least initially. "It'll take time to rebuild," she acknowledges.

But the change of pace will also give O'Donnel more time — to freelance elsewhere and to work on her cookbook. Her True/Slant column, which will also focus on recipes and mindful eating, will be published only three times a week.

A Mighty Appetite was published five days a week. "It was like you couldn't have a weekend," O'Donnel says, noting all the time needed to source recipes and test them. "After more than three years of daily deadlines, I'm a little fried."

Photo by Karla McDuffie

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.

How will you differentiate the All We Can Eat (AWCE) blog from the Going Out Gurus (GOG) blog?

A: From the what? Just kidding. I love the GOG blog. The way we see it, GOG is about GO. In fact, it's a G to GO. AWCE, then, is about SI (staying in). Plus food policy/politics, shopping, food/web culture, product craziness, that sort of stuff. Pretty much everything food—related except dining out.

How many times will you and your team post a day?

A: We're aiming for at least three or four posts a day. Time will tell if we're able to keep it up.

Will the blog be edited or just be a lawless free-for-all like the Y&H blog?

A: As much as I appreciate lawless free-for-alls (I am from the Wild Wild West, you know), I am proud to say that it will indeed be edited. By me. Which is why I'm not sleeping. Oh, to be young and hungry again. (Although, seriously, when was the last time you were young OR actually hungry, at least for very long? You eat a ton.)

Will Tom Sietsema's items move over to the AWCE blog or stay at the GOG blog?

A: See answer #1. They'll stay at GOG, unless I can get him to write about his cooking exploits, which is an intriguing possibility. Wouldn't you want to read about that?

How does Kim O'Donnel's A Mighty Appetite blog figure into the new blog, if at all? Will it remain separate or go away completely?

A: I think AYCE [sic] and MA are going to work well together — but they'll be separate. I want Kim to keep writing her breezy, longer once-daily posts, which have a strong following, while we are a little (OK, maybe a lot) more hodge-podge during the day. The rhythms can play off each other, I think. And we're planning ways to intersect from time to time.

How the hell do you find the blog on the Post Web site?

A: Uh-oh. This can sometimes be an issue with a publication that has so many blogs, but there are several ways, actually. From the home page, there's a "Blog Directory" link (main middle column, scroll down halfway and look for "News Columns and Blogs"). In the directory, we're the second one listed, right after Kim's. (Here's to having a blog name that starts with "A" under "Arts and Living.") We can also be found under the "Latest Posts" dropdown, from a site search (just type "All We Can Eat" into that main search window on the home page), or of course from the Food page (www.washingtonpost.com/food), right above the main art.

I will still scoop you at every opportunity! (OK, that's not a question, but just a nervous reaction to yet another blog muscling in on my turf.)

A: You scare me. Seriously, this would be why I'm not sleeping. Although we did scoop you on that White House first meal, didn't we?

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:

"Gastrosexual [There's that damn cap letter again.] A man who sees cooking as a hobby and not just a chore. Deeply passionate about analysis and innovation and creativity in cuisine."

This definition, in other words, has little to do with sexism and everything to do with the still-lingering idea that male chefs—despite a long, long, long history of men as cooks—might as well wear a tutu in the kitchen. There's a contingent of males out there who haven't watched Iron Chef , read Kitchen Confidential, or learned to equate cooking with 12-inch knifes, scars, and butchering large bloody carcasses. They still think of a chef as Felix Unger in an apron, trying to explain the difference between spaghetti and linguine to the big bad brutes around him.

The term "metrosexual" was created as a way to describe men, both gay and straight, who were interested in satisfying their own pleasures, whether shopping, dressing, clubbing, or getting their hair done. The term, of course, was particularly helpful to marketers who wanted to target straight men without suggesting they were (gasp!) feminine or gay. Suddenly, there was a whole sub-genre of American males, heterosexuals who could shop their brains out without fear of being denied entry to the country club. The self-denying man of the '50s was dead.

Gastrosexual is obviously an extension of metrosexual. It de-stigmatizes the idea of straight men who love to cook. It tells them that they aren't Felix Ungers. Frankly, I think the term is both unnecessary and infantile; it assumes that men are still afraid of aligning themselves with a skill, an art even, that is nurturing, satisfying, loving, and passionate—that they still need a term to distance themselves from these touchy-feely emotions.

Folks, can we please grow up as a culture?

Frankly, if I were O'Donnel and Kasper, I'd revel in the fact that no one needs to apply a new word to women who love to cook or love to cook for others, seduction or not. It's just part of the female DNA. I wish it were considered part of the male DNA.

Photo by Tracy Hunter