Category Archives: CNN

Sometimes I get all shirty about wanting people to cook.

Yes, YOU, Meghan McCain.

You should cook. Yes, you. Even if you don’t want to.

This isn’t like saying that you should learn Ovid in the original Latin for the enrichment of your soul, or requiring that you hunker and hone your julienne and demi-glace skills until you emerge victorious in a battle overseen by Alton Brown or Anthony Bourdain. This is about getting yourself fed and taking a modicum of responsibility for it.

You eat, right? Maybe even more than once a day? (Or even if you ingest some combination of nutrients solely through methods that don’t require chewing, smoothies have to taste like something, don’t they?) And I’m going to go ahead and assume that you’d like to continue living in your body for the next while. Assembling foodstuffs for intake without the intermediary of a drive-thru speaker, menu, or segmented tray and microwave is the ideal way to facilitate that.

Yet people object, throw their hands in the air and simply refuse. Here’s why they’re wrong.

Read — 5 bad excuses for not cooking

Sometimes I write a super-public love letter to my husband

vincent price

I was the first one to say “I love you.”

I couldn’t hold back any longer. Since the moment I’d met my now-husband in the flesh, the words had been thrumming in my thoughts so constantly, I was surprised they hadn’t manifested in 3-inch letters across my forehead.

It was too soon. This man was too lovely to be true. I should wait for him to say it.

But that night, half-awake under the covers, curled together as a single creature, basking in the afterglow of having met his longtime friends (who clearly adored him as much as I did), the words kicked so hard at the back of my teeth, they just came clattering out.

Then I held my breath and waited. Three words. Eight letters. My whole self at stake.

Read — Have I told you lately that I love you?

Sometimes I write about the naughty bits

When I was in seventh grade, my grandmother informed our extended family that I was a pervert. Mind you, I was as squeaky clean in thought and deed as you’d expect a badly permed, brace-faced, Catholic school spelling bee winner would be, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t curious about a few things.

I’d often give my bedroom over to visiting relatives, and this time, my grandmother had decided on a little light reading — in this case, my copy of Judy Blume’s “Then Again, Maybe I Won’t.” It might seem downright quaint in this age of instantly accessible porn and e-book readers, but an awful lot of ladies who came of age in the ’70s and ’80s and into the ’90s got a significant chunk of our sex education from young adult books.
Continue reading →

Sometimes I write about anxiety and attempts to defeat it

Anxiety Kat Kinsman

“The blues are because you’re getting fat or maybe it’s been raining too long. You’re sad, that’s all. But the mean reds are horrible. You’re afraid and you sweat like hell, but you don’t know what you’re afraid of. Except something bad is going to happen, only you don’t know what it is. … What I’ve found does the most good is just to get into a taxi and go to Tiffany’s. It calms me down right away, the quietness and the proud look of it; nothing very bad could happen to you there.” — “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” by Truman Capote

I am hunched in half on a blue chair on the third floor of the Tiffany & Co. flagship store, willing myself to calm down or simply disappear. At this moment, the latter seems a more likely possibility, but even so, it’s not working. A neatly suited young woman is dispatched to assess the state of my well-being, because so far as I can tell, most other ladies are pretty jazzed to be in the temple of sparkle and promise.

I, on the other hand, am a quivering storm cloud, desperately trying to contain the shocks and sog of my current upset so they don’t stain anyone else’s happy pre-holiday afternoon. She approaches, kind-eyed and discreet, “Soooo, how are you doing today, Miss?”
Continue reading →

Sometimes I chat with Sanjay Gupta about trans fats

GUPTA: Now, none of this is a done deal yet. There’s a 60-day public comment period. The FDA’s going to consider concerns, suggestions that anybody including the manufacturers might have.

But, again, this is a pretty big deal. I want to talk more about this with CNN Eatocracy managing editor Kat Kinsman.

Welcome back to the program.

KAT KINSMAN, CNN EATOCRACY: Thanks, Sanjay.

GUPTA: What are we talking about with trans fats? Which foods are the worst offenders here?

KINSMAN: Well, a lot of them are sort of your treat foods, microwave popcorn, frozen pizzas, frosting in a can, coffee creamers — they’re little things that probably don’t make up the bulk of your diet but they might make up the treat portion of your diet, except for margarine which is a fairly significant part of often a household’s cooking.
Continue reading →

Sometimes I just couldn’t go to school

School hurt so much, I just stopped going.

In these enlightened times, my condition would likely be swiftly identified as “school refusal behavior,” treated with care and skill and billed to my parents’ insurance under DSM-5 code 309.21: separation anxiety disorder. The root cause might be fear of academic failure, trauma associated with the location, worry over leaving a parent’s protective sphere or upset caused by unkind classmates, but the outcome is the same: It’s not that the child won’t go to school, it’s that they simply can’t.
Continue reading →