Category Archives: CNN

Sometimes I get all wistful

kat kinsman childhood home

Two decades ago, I strode out of my house and knew I’d never think of it as my home again.

I hugged my mother goodbye and climbed into the car with my dad, my tape collection and every decent piece of clothing I owned. When he made the multistate drive back from dropping me off at college, the car would be empty, and the house would, to me, no longer be our family home — just my parents’ house.

Recently, it ceased to be even that.

Read “When home is where the heart isn’t” at CNN Living and enjoy some mortifying pictures from my youth.

Sometimes I get hot under the collar about grilling and gender

Last week, an article calling grilling “the domain of Dude” got me a little hot under the collar (see the Storify below). It’s since been amended, but here’s why I got so fired up.

I lived in a fifth-floor New York City walk-up apartment with no yard when I started getting the itch to put food to flame. I was drawn to it like a moth, for reasons I couldn’t quite grasp, and which now smolder at the core of my food-loving soul.

Whenever my friend Ali was out of town, I’d let myself onto her back deck to fire up her kettle grill after watering her plants. Since I took pains to replace the charcoal and scrub the grate as cleanly as I could manage, she was kind enough to issue me a key.

Read — This girl is on fire – at the grill
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Sometimes I just couldn’t find a date

Editor’s note: In 1990, Eatocracy’s Kat Kinsman didn’t have a date to her senior prom. Only opposite-sex couples were allowed to buy tickets, so she couldn’t just pair up with a friend. She was terrified to go without a date, but decided she’d take a leap of faith. Here’s the pep talk she wishes she could have given herself more than 20 years ago.

Dear 17-year-old self considering staying home on prom night because you don’t have a date,

Oh, you poor, stressed-out, self-hating misfit girl, just suck it up and go.
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