Born and raised outside of Philadelphia by two Philly natives, I cut my teeth (not long after the T-bone from my high chair days) on footlong sandwiches that are my hometown’s cultural icons. I’m talking about the cheese steak and the hoagie, possibly two of the greatest artery cloggers ever invented, a mound of meat and fixins tucked into a freshly baked Italian roll, always made to order with homegrown “atty-tude” in a neighborhood joint—a luncheonette, corner sandwich shop, or street cart.
Continue reading... →CHICKPEA “CRAB CAKES”
True story: Less than two weeks before the manuscript for my book, The Meatlover’s Meatless Cookbook was due, with most recipes edited and determined fit for public consumption, I pan-fried a batch of my falafel patties for me and my husband, Russ. He took one bite into his falafel-on-a-bun and looked at me with all seriousness. “This falafel looks and eats likes a crab cake.”
He was right. With thirty combined years of living in Washington, D.C.—crab cake central—we could both see that this chickpea patty had Chesapeake potential.
With the wild eyes of a mad scientist, I immediately went to work, replacing Middle Eastern falafel spices with Old Bay, the iconic Maryland seafood seasoning that’s had a cult following for three generations. Out with the tahini, in with a yogurt remoulade and horseradishy cocktail sauce that transport you from the Mid-East to the Mid-Atlantic.
The result: Downright crab-shacky.
Continue reading... →This post is the first in a series which will be followed for the next three weeks with recipes posted every Saturday from Kim’s new book The Meatlover’s Meatless Cookbook. If you have any questions for Kim about green cooking, recipes, or the Meatless Monday campaign please add them below and we’ll include them in a follow-up interview to be posted at the end of the series. Let’s get cooking!
Kim O’Donnel is a pioneer, one of first writers to regularly feature vegetarian dishes when she began her career as a writer for the Washington Post years ago. She embraced the Meatless Mondays movement begun in 2003 and has been promoting the movement through her writing ever since. Kim has given talks everywhere from Politics and Prose to The American Culinary Institute. She’s even helping launch the first Meatless Mondays program in Seattle (where she currently resides) on November 29th of this year. Most recently, Kim has been tapped to write a new bimonthly health column for USA Today.
What exactly is the Meatless Monday Campaign?
Meatless Monday is a New York-based nonprofit initiative in partnership with the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. It started back in 2003 as a way to encourage Americans to reduce their saturated fat intake by 15 percent. The gist: Take one day off from meat for your health – and more recently, for the environment.
Seven years later, this fledgling nonprofit has become a movement of major proportions, with supporters that include Mario Batali, Baltimore City Public Schools, Gwyneth Paltrow and Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.
Continue reading... →