She was a true original and there’ll never be another one like her.

What a stroke of genius to show up for a talking heads segment about her book determined to demonstrate the book, not just discuss it.

It was fascinating watching some clips of the early shows on TV last night. I had forgotten how well she came across. She had a natural talent suited for TV, a knowledge of the subject, and she was a little bit of a ham. Add to that a little verbal slapstick and you had, as one wag on Nightline put it, the first show on PTV that was actually entertaining. It was good cooking, it was good television, and it was irresistable. She not only awakened in a lot of people an interest in fine food, she brought a lot of people to Public TV.

I was working for the PTV station in Austin when we first started airing the shows, but I couldn’t afford a TV so I saw her only at work. We used her first cookbook as a premium during a pledge drive and must have gone thru a truckload of them.

Work on TV crews bored me but I would have loved to have been on the floor during the taping of one of her shows. Some credit is due to the WGBH execs who got past their initial "Who is this mad woman" reaction and greenlighted a series.

She changed our culture.