Greg and Jon recall how "The Food Guys" came to the airwaves.
He's been baking since he was eleven years old, and Greg Patent's love of cooking brought him together with Jon Jackson's similar interest in 1972, in the form a meeting of the "gourmet club" at the University of Montana-Missoula, where Greg was teaching zoology. Jon got an invitation to attend one of the club's group dinners, focused on international cuisine, and the two became fast friends. Greg's abiding food interest led him to host a local television show, "Big Sky Cooking," and before long, his academic career had given way to a culinary one: writing food columns, working as a chef and then for Cuisinart, and writing cookbooks.
Jon Jackson's profound interest in food and cooking had led him to a stint writing restaurant reviews for Big Sky Journal. After Jon and Greg had become friends, one of them came up with the idea to start a radio show all about food. "You have a degree in wildlife biology and I have one in zoology, so we knew animals, we knew how to cook them, and then we knew how to make them taste good." says Greg. Sometime in the late 1990s, they proposed the concept to KUFM's station manager, Terry Conrad, and the rest is delicious history.
"The thing about food is that it's an inexhaustible topic, because it's always evolving."
(Broadcast: "The Food Guys," 9/02/18. Listen weekly on the radio at 11:50 a.m. Sundays, or via podcast.)
