Filed by KOSU News in Art & Life.
October 10, 2009

Good Eats has become a staple on the Food Network, but it’s not a typical cooking show. Chef Alton Brown created the Peabody Award-winning program to be a mix of MacGyver, Mr. Wizard and History Rocks.

When Brown last appeared on Weekend Edition, he had just finished his motorcycle tour of America’s road food. Now, as his show celebrates its 10th year on the air, he has a new book out this month. Good Eats: The Early Years is the first of a three-volume set.

Brown tells Liane Hansen it was painful in some ways to look back on his show’s early years. “When you’re kind of just starting out you make a lot of mistakes,” he says. “I think one of the whole points of waiting 10 years to do a book — which I always said I was going to wait, the show’s got to make it a decade before I would do a book — is you get that space required for retrospection.”

But he says it was also a “valuable, cathartic” experience. “You get to kind of pay for your sins or at least make a few small repairs — at the very least.” Copyright 2009 National Public Radio