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Cheryl Wixson, a cook, food educator and writer, grew up on a dairy farm in Winslow. Her uncle had a venison farm. Another relative had a turkey farm. Wixson herself kept a 130-pound pig named Petunia in her back yard in Bangor. That was back in the days when she ran a respected gourmet shop and cafe downtown, and before she opened a professional cooking school in her industrial chic kitchen on West Broadway.
All this, and Wixson still didn’t have her foodie dream come true. That had to wait until she met up with Maine humorist Tim Sample, who had the good sense to ask Wixson the question she most loves answering: What’s for supper?
Except, of course, he dropped the terminal R – as Wixson, a native Mainer does, too – and together they came up with the name of a new 13-part cooking series, “What’s for Suppah? Beans, Blueberries and Beyond,” which premieres at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 18, on Maine PBS. Funded in part by a Rural Development Grant through the United States Department of Agriculture, each show has two segments: one in locations around the state, and one in a kitchen studio at MWEB-TV in Bangor. The show also offers recipes.
Wixson, who develops and prepares the menu and is currently working on a doctoral degree in food science and human nutrition, is assisted by Sample, who travels to Maine communities to report on the sources of the food. He then assists Wixson in the preparation and eating of the food back at the studio.
“When I shut my restaurant down 10 years ago, it was my dream to get into television,” said Wixson, who lives in Bangor and writes occasional food columns for this newspaper. “I wanted to do a show about Maine agriculture and the traditions of Maine food and how it all has played into our culture.”
The topics for the one-hour segments include fiddleheads, potatoes, wild turkeys, goat cheese, blueberries, crab, maple syrup and beans.
“What’s for suppah?” Sample asks at the beginning of each segment filmed in the kitchen studio, which Wixson designed.
On a recent taping session, the menu included curried squash and crabmeat bisque, which Wixson had prepared with the help of her mother, Rowena Palmer, and Palmer’s good friend from college, Hannah Dring. The two assistants, both retired from their professional careers, have assisted Wixson in other food-related projects. Officially, they are production assistants, but, dressed in aprons and diligently chopping herbs and onions, they prefer to call themselves “pseudo sous-chefs.”
“We’ve had a grand time,” said Palmer, as she prepared a tray of beautifully arranged ingredients to carry onto the set. “I started cooking as a little girl with my grandmother on the farm. And with four children of my own, I had to cook. And I just love cooking with Hannah. We just raise the Dickens.”
Indeed, the atmosphere on the set was light and cheery. Sample, an incurable cut-up, made jokes even when the tape wasn’t rolling. When Wixson turned on a blender, he quickly adopted his Maine accent and commented: “That sounds like an old Plymouth Scamp I had. You stepped on it and – .” He pointed to the blender and raised his eyebrows. When the taping began, he told the joke again on air. At one point, when Wixson, who also has a feisty personality, offered a playfully snide remark, Sample piped in: “She’s kinda like Martha Stewart at San Quentin.”
When it was time to work, both Sample and Wixson focused their attention on the food. Wixson directed Sample as he added ingredients to pots on the stove and then stirred them – as he riffed on Maine humor. She explained the origin of the food and her choice to add Thai flavoring. Sample explained that he had learned from visiting Cafe Miranda in Rockland that the two most important elements in any recipe are panache and aplomb, both of which he pronounced with crusty intonations.
At one point, the blender shot squash juice into the air and onto Wixson’s chef’s jacket. “You know what we say in Maine, don’t-cha?” vamped Sample. “Get anything on you?” The two hosts laughed as they dabbed spots of squash from Wixson’s chef’s jacket.
“I like to cook. I like to eat,” said Wixson earlier. She was the first woman to receive a bachelor degree in agricultural engineering at the University of Maine, and spent 10 years in the pulp, paper and telecommunications industries before turning her focus to raising a family.
In 1978, Wixson and her husband went on a cruise in Europe, where she experienced fine dining for the first time.
“I ate out for a year trying to recreate that experience of food,” said Wixson. “And guess what? It didn’t happen. But I began to cook.”
Less than a decade later, she stepped into the food world full time as executive director and food engineer at a private social club in Bangor. In 1986, she opened Gourmet to Go, a specialty food and wine store on Central Street in Bangor and eventually expanded the business to Caf? Nouveau, a restaurant that featured international cuisine with organic Maine products. Both businesses closed in 1994. [The current Caf? Nouveau on Hammond Street in Bangor is under different ownership.] Five years later, Wixson opened her own industrial home kitchen as an educational facility.
For the last year, however, she has dedicated her expertise and attention to “What’s for Suppah?”
“I’ve always been a huge proponent of Maine agriculture and Maine food,” said Wixson, who shot her first deer last year. “In all my teaching and writing, I’ve always said buy Maine, buy local. This just takes it to a new level.”
Ed Fowler, the project manager for the series and producer of the studio segments said the show has another unique side to it.
“We’re featuring Maine products and Maine industry in a Maine-produced project,” said Fowler, who has worked for Maine PBS for more than 25 years. “We want to entertain and inform. That’s what I was after, but the key is that it is all Maine-based.”
“What’s for Suppah?” is the only studio-based program currently produced by Maine PBS in Bangor.
Wixson also hopes that the cooking show will demystify the food arts for home cooks. “Food is not something we need to be scared of,” she said. “It can be your best friend. Or it can be your worst enemy. But I want it to be your best friend.”
Sample, it turns out, is a perfect match for Wixson. The two had not met before the show, but they quickly developed a collegial, spunky rapport, with Wixson playing the straight woman to Sample’s jokester.
But the point for Sample is that even he finds himself thinking about how he might jazz up his meals at home.
“Cooking is like science,” said Sample, who traveled from his home in Brunswick for the tapings. “It seems mystical and complicated for people who don’t do it. Cheryl is very good at demystifying and de-snobbifying cooking. She has this way that makes you think: I could do that. Food preparation seems like magic to me. It seems unapproachable. But what this show says is: It’s not that hard and here’s the way to do it.
The spring roll, Sample said, is a classic example of his own inability to decipher the methods and ingredients of food preparation.
“Frankly, I see it on the plate and it looks like it came from Mars or like it just arrived from China,” he said, slipping back into his Down East lilt. “Then we made spring rolls on the show and I was driving home that day thinking: Son of a gun, I think I’ll make spring rolls tonight.”
Springs rolls from Maine?
“Look, it’s not that hard,” said Wixson. “It’s no different from Martha on this set, except I don’t have 500 people working on staff. This is my state. These are my people. And I think we have wonderful food. ”
So spring rolls it is. And spicy black bean dip, and grilled duck breast with Maine wild blueberry sauce, maple raisin bread and marinated fiddlehead salad and more.
“What’s for Suppah?” premieres 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 18, and will be rebroadcast 7:30 p.m. Oct. 25, 3:30 p.m. Oct. 26, and noon Nov. 1 on the stations of Maine PBS. .For more information and for recipes, which will be posted the day the show airs, visit the online site: www.mainepbs.org/whatsforsuppah
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