Watching What We Eat: The Evolution of Television Cooking Shows

(Paperback)

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Since the first boxy black-and-white TV sets began to appear in American living rooms in the late 1940s, we have been watching people chop, saute, fillet, whisk, flip, pour, arrange and serve food on the small screen. More than just a how-to or an amusement, cooking shows are also a unique social barometer. Their legacy corresponds to the transition from women at home to women at work, from eight-hour to 24/7 workdays, from cooking as domestic labor to enjoyable leisure, and from clearly defined to more fluid gender roles. While variety shows, Westerns, and live, scripted dramas have gone the way of rabbit ear antennae, cooking shows are still being watched, often on high definition plasma screens via Tivo. "Watching What We Eat: The Evolution of Television Cooking Shows" illuminates how cooking shows have both reflected and shaped significant changes in American culture and will explore why it is that just about everybody still finds them irresistible.

Reviews

Collins, a college librarian with a lifelong love of cooking shows, gives a decade-by-decade breakdown of the evolution of TV cooking as a dead-accurate social barometer. From providing helpful hints for homemakers in the 1950's, catering to the lavish lifestyles and culinary excess of the 80's and satisfying the celeb-hungry, reality-crazed audience of the new millennium, Collins examines how far cooking programs have gone to adapt their content, style and character to both suit and define various moments in the 20th century. Her thorough research is spiced with anecdotes and personal testimonials from chefs, historians and foodies about the world of TV cooking and the eccentric personalities that populate it. * TIME Magazine *
"Cooking is so huge on television today that it has made chefs as famous as movie stars. From the earliest days of flickering black-and-white sets, food shows have infused the tube with class and character that makes this one of the richest genres of programming. It is about time this fact was recognized and explored in depth, with insight and good humor, as it is in Kathleen Collins' Watching What We Eat. This is a book not only for foodies, but for anyone with an interest in this vital vein of American popular culture." -- Jane and Michael Stern, authors of Jane and Michael Stern's Encyclopedia of Pop Culture (HarperCollins) and American Gourmet (HarperCollins)
"In her lively and informative narrative of television food shows, Kathleen Collins captures the phenomenal growth of food as entertainment, what has evolved into a new form of spectator sport in America. The rise of TV celebrity chefs within the context of the nation's growing sophistication about food are stories that needed to be told, and Collins has told them well." -- Barbara Haber, food historian, author of From Hardtack to Home Fries: An Uncommon History of American Cooks and Meals (Penguin)
"Dione Lucas started them in the 1940s, Julia Child popularized them in the 1960s, and the Food Network hit them out of the park in the 1990s.Since the dawn of TV, cooking shows have captivated Americans, and in Watching What We Eat Kathleen Collins explains why.With an easy wit and a "me, too" voice that pulls readers right in, Collins charts the rise of TV cooks as educators, mentors, entertainers and co-conspirators; indeed, as beloved, central and enduring characters in our national pop culture." --Adam Ried, Equipment Guru, PBS' "America's Test Kitchen"
"[Watching What We Eat] is bound to become the go-to reference for anyone who wants to learn about this important, compelling aspect of food's mass-mediation in the modern age."-Gastronomica
"What makes [Watching What We Eat] both more interesting and important, however, is not so much a review of all the people and programs, but rather its insignt into such programming as a social barometer of changing American life... Based on extensive interviews as well as archival work, this is a delightfully written record of a type of program all too often overlooked in the past."-Communication Booknotes Quarterly
Reviewed in Globe & Mail Weekend, 11 July 2009
"An entertaining look at the history and evolution of television cooking shows. It examines how the shows shifted over time, involving more men and children and mirroring societal changes."-The Philadelphia Inquirer
"Collins, reared on food television and educated in library science, brings to the table a wealth of personal experience and research. She mined television and print archives to uncover fascinating gems about television cooking-show pioneers. On the set, Beard invented modern elements of food styling still common in food photography, using ink to emphasize the veins in Roquefort cheese and substituting mashed potatoes for ice cream."-Wilson Quarterly
"An entertaining look at the history and evolution of television cooking shows. It examines how the shows shifted over time, involving more men and children and mirroring societal changes." Reviewed online at www.star-telegram.com
"Treena and I are just plain delighted with Kathleen Collins detailed treatment of not only our own not-so-hidden struggle between entertainment and teaching . . . but also her very readable and inclusive review of food on TV. We are delighted to be included in such wonderful company." --Graham Kerr, host of "The Galloping Gourmet" and author of Day-by-Day Gourmet Cookbook: Recipes and Reflections for Better Living
Watching What We Eat isa well-researchworkfilled with delightful anecdotes and fascinating insights into America's most popular food shows.It is a "must read" for everyone interested in food TV-- and anyone interested in a delicious read. Andrew F. Smith, Editor-in-Chief, Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America
I have been waiting for someone to take on this project. Some believe television changed the sense of food in the American psyche. Kathleen Collins digs into that idea with admirable tenacity. This is definitely worth the read. --Lynne Rossetto Kasper, host of American Public Media's The Splendid Table radio show
Announced - Publishers Weekly, January 26, 2009
"In this robust roundup, researcher and librarian Collins scours the archives to show how cooking programs throughout the decades reflect America's changing cultural mores. From James Beard to Rachael Ray, TV cooking hosts have brought this intimate brand of entertainment into the home, moving from educating the general public on the finer points of home economics to coaching us on developing our inner creativity. Collins skillfully marshals her research...Readers might be surprised at the role public television played in nurturing the genre, presently evolved into the Food Network's elevation of chefs as celebrities and food akin to porn. Collins's engaging...study finds cooking shows the great leveler in gender, class and lifestyles and with a strong future." -Publishers Weekly -- Publishers Weekly * Publishers Weekly *
"Collins provides a detailed and often entertaining chronicle of the rise of TV programs, excelling at insightful thumbnail sketches" 8 june 2009 -- Aram Bakshian Jr * Wall Street Journal *

Author Bio

Kathleen Collins is an experienced author and researcher who has studied and written about television, media history, popular culture and food. Her work has appeared in the magazines Working Woman and Bitch: Feminist Response to Pop Culture and in the anthology Secrets & Confidences: The Complicated Truth About Women's Friendships (Seal Press: 2004). She has also written encyclopedia entries on a variety of media history topics. She has a Master's degree in journalism with a specialization in cultural reporting and criticism from New YorkUniversity and a Master's degree in library science from Long IslandUniversity. For the past ten years, she has worked as an editorial researcher for a variety of publications including Glamour and Ladies' Home Journal. She is now a librarian and lives in Manhattan.