Simply '70s: Avant le Food Network

I am so old, I remember when cooking shows were fun.

You see, you little whippersnappers, back in the prehistory of the 1970s -- when we had no Internets and had to push AMC Pacers uphill both ways to get to and from school -- cooking programs were on regular television and actually were about cooking, more or less, as opposed to whatever the hell the Food Network is about. Gastronomic pornography?

Me, I don't know.


BACK THEN, Justin Wilson ruled the public-TV airwaves in Louisiana -- and across the country -- teaching folks how to cook like a good Cajun, with a funny story or three thrown in as lagniappe. And the best part was that I actually knew (or knew of) some of the people in his tall tales.

Which made them just plausible enough to be hilarious.

I remember that ol' Zhoo-STAHN would measure salt or whatever into his hand and then throw it in the pot. Then, just to show off, he'd measure some more into his hand, grab a measuring spoon, and fill it exactly with what lay in his palm.

To this day, more than three decades later, I do the same thing. And when my Yankee wife yells at me, I take a measuring spoon. . . .