'QED Cooks' Marks A Quarter-Century On The Air

PITTSBURGH, PA - When Chris Fennimore helped a friend start a small community garden in Homewood Cemetery in 1993, he had no idea it would lead to a Pittsburgh TV phenomenon. This weekend he’ll mark the 25th anniversary of “QED Cooks,” with a special episode airing Aug. 4 at 10 a.m. on WQED-TV.

The show grew out of that community garden, which produced an abundance of zucchini that first year. Fennimore approached Nancy Polinsky, then WQED’s director of continuity, about making a spot to air asking for zucchini recipes. The feedback was so overwhelming that it led to the first “QED Cooks” show featuring those zucchini dishes.

Since then, Fennimore has appeared on several kitchen sets (including a mauve-colored one), asking viewers to send him recipes and he has invited some of them to join him on the program. Volunteers prep for each show and usher each cook in rotation to chat with Chris as they prepare their recipe. More than 100 cooking marathons have raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for WQED and the thank-you gift has always been a cookbook of all the recipes received for each show.

“In home cooking, the nice thing is that nothing changes,” Fennimore said. “People still treasure recipes for the memories of people and times they bring to life. It's not about the food - it's about the sharing. That's what has distinguished our series for all these years, when most other cooking shows are just about the food.”

Fennimore, Polinsky and other co-hosts have received tens of thousands of recipes from viewers. Fenimore has hosted more than 1,000 home cooks and professionals and guests and has created more than 100 weekly programs from edited segments of the thow.

Celebrity guests have included Lidia Bastianich (“Lidia’s Italy”), Mary Ann Esposito (“Ciao italia with Mary Ann Esposito”) Joe Negri, Valerie McDonald Roberts, Uncle Charlie of Uncle Charlie’s Sausage, and local celebrity chefs like Kevin Sousa, Bill Fuller, Daniel Leiphart, Greg Alauzan, and Michele Savoia.

Many of the episodes were repackaged and distributed nationally to public television stations as the “America’s Home Cooking” series through PBS and America’s Public Television (APT).

Photo via WQED-TV.

Subscribe to Pittsburgh Patch for more local news and real-time alerts.