The Cooking Show

In 1996 I started listening to talk radio. The third show that I got introduced to was The Cooking Show. This show was hosted by Tina Habas and Nancy Merrill. They were on News Talk 63- KHOW 630 AM from 3-4 PM on Saturdays, right before the Mike Boyle Restaurant Show. The Mike Boyle Restaurant Show was on from 4-6 PM back then (it is on 710 KNUS now on Saturdays 3-5 PM and Sundays 10-Noon.) Nancy and Tina were an excellent team. If Tina didn’t have an answer to a question, than Nancy would and vice versa. They loved to cook and talk about cooking. They would get a lot of phone calls asking questions and giving recipes. Cooking wasn’t their main careers. They were attorneys at the time. I used to get hungry just listening to them.Tina loved being on remote, as did Nancy. One of my favorite remotes they did was from the Aspen Food and Wine Magazine Classic back in 1997. They had some very popular chefs at that event like Emeril Lagasse and Julia Child , and it was something that I looked forward to every year. Another fun remote they did in 1996 was the Share our Strength Taste of the Nation in Denver. They had different restaurants come to their booth to bring them food. In 1997 The Cooking Show moved to KEZW 1430 on the radio dial. KEZW was building their Saturday talk line up of shows, as they played music during the week. They still have some of these talk shows on Saturdays. The Cooking Show at the time was on from 7-8 AM. In 1999 they moved the show to 9-10 AM on Saturdays. In 2002 or 2003, Nancy had a kids cooking show where she invited three or four kids to come into the studio to help her co-host the show and to be guests on her show. I e-mailed her to be on the show, and it seemed like it took her for ever to respond to me. A couple of days before the show she picked me to be one of the kid co-hosts. It was thrilling to be asked to be a guest on a show that I had listened to since I was a young child. Nancy was very encouraging to me before the show telling me that if I was feeling nervous to not worry about it because the host that comes right after their show got really nervous before his show also.When I got into the radio studio it was very enjoyable and I felt like I was a real radio host. We made a delicious chocolate cake that could be done in the microwave. It tasted absolutely scrumptious. While we were cooking it, I could smell the chocolate. It smelled so tasty.After we cooked the cake, Nancy had a cook book author on named Judy Bird. Judy was a very engaging author. I had a question for her -Was her book available in audio? She thought it was an interesting question. She said that she would have to think about it. Maybe that book made it to audio. This cooking show isn’t on any more and I really miss it. Sometime down the road another cooking show might come along. Next week, my blog will talk about my recent interview with Nancy Merrill.Thanks for tuning in.Jeremy Levy