program gives listeners a taste of the chefs and restaurants that can be found
across the state. The host of the show is
Mary Twedt (who I know via her workat the Greek Food Festival- which is coming up May 21-23) and her program focuses on Arkansas
cuisine via recipes, interviews and food news.
noon on Little Rock public radio station FM 89.1. More about show can be found here. Yum!
As to the story behind the program, here it is:
‘Arkansas Cooks started in October of 2002. For many years
Mary wanted to do a TV show called Arkansas Cooks in a kind of wacky and wild
style. Mounting a television show is quite a huge task and very expensive.
While Mary and her husband Paul were traveling through Tennessee, they were
listening to another NPR radio show called The Splendid Table. A wonderful host, Lynne Rossetto Kasper, was
talking with a chef and then Mary had the idea that this too could be
done easily at KUAR Public Radio in Little Rock. With ideas in hand, Mary went to see
Ben Fry and Ron Breeding and asked if the idea of a fun cooking show could
possibly be done there. They both looked totally befuddeled at this
request but granted Mary 13 shows for the first year. She bested them with 43
shows and the rest, as they say, is history.’
