America's Test Kitchen

My roommate Natasha and I love this show. In our pre-cable days, on Sunday mornings we would get up and watch back-to-back food programming on PBS. A little Julie Child and Jacques Pepin, and some America's Test Kitchen. It's so helpful and clear and demystifies the cooking process, all brought to us by the clever folks at Cook's Illustrated Magazine. Christopher Kimball, founder of said magazine and host of said tv show, was at a Border's this evening on Michigan Ave. I could not go because of my class (see previous rant), but the lovely Natasha took my ATK cookbook to be signed. We think it says, "All the best with the dishes." It's very scrawled, we're not sure. But he stamped a little red bow tie beneath his signature, which makes it all the better. Natasha said he was just encyclopedic in his knowledge of cooking. Apparently there were a couple of stupid questions (one involving billing with the magazine and another involving rutabagas, my mother's personal favorite root vegetable), but many of the questions were good. Anyhow, that's all. Except, how much fun would you have if you were helping Christopher Kimball and Julia Child cook in the kitchen? And then spend a meal (and several bottles of wine) and conversation? How great?