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The Kitchen is Closed

Pantry.
Luke Sharrett
/
NPR
Nearly one-third of households on SNAP, formerly known as food stamps, still have to visit a food pantry to keep themselves fed, according to USDA data.

'Check the Pantry' wraps production.

As we told you last week, Sunday’s Check the Pantry was the last regular episode of the cooking show, with host Jeff Lockwood explaining that his duties as KBBI’s operations manager are keeping him pretty busy. During his conversation with Jay Barrett, he talked about the backstory behind several episodes..

KBBI: Was your most memorable show? I really like the one about gin but what else was, just sticks out in your mind?

Lockwood: Well that one I, that one was memorable because we did it in my greenhouse and it was like 105 degrees in there, so I was trying to simulate India. But, but I don't know, I guess probably my, sort of the episode that I liked the most and kind of thought was sort of closest to, sort of, what I wanted the show to really be, you know, was one that we did, or that I did, with on, one of the fishing boats I used to work on. It was it was a red salmon episode and it was actually a two-parter because he can't, you can't say really much at all about salmon and, in one episode. So, but, you know, as part of it was on the boat and part of it was part of it was, was just about fishing, and then part of it was about cooking salmon. And then I did, I had a whole other thing. I had this, I had this thing that I went out with Kachemak Bay Research Reserve on a stream hike with them that they do every now and then there was where we went up the I think it was Stariski Creek. And looked at like little baby salmon and stuff and about how baby salmon in the land, and the land interact and that kind of thing. And I had this sitting around for like a year, and I did, I wanted to do something with it, but I didn't know what to do with it. And then when I did the red salmon episode I was like, oh I could stick this in there and it, I mean it fit perfectly. So yeah, I was, kind of like, I feel like that was sort of more the, the kind of thing I was going for, it was pretty broad in scope and you know.

KBBI: How many episodes total have you produced?

Lockwood: I was just actually counting because I knew you're gonna ask me that, it's, I want to say, I didn't, I think it's 73 about my maths not very good. So, but that's about right, that sounds about right.

KBBI: Did you have any episodes, or recipes or techniques that it, just didn't work and your show was about how this didn't work.

Lockwood: Yeah, a lot of them. Actually I had some, I had some disasters when I was trying out different kinds of starches. And yeah, okay. The problem is I can't really remember the things that I did because now I've done so many, but I know I just had one recently, it was kind of a disaster was, that it was a, there was well, there was the time that I went, we went ice fishing the show was supposed to be about trout. But when ice fishing, when ice fishing with, with my friend Otts and we didn't catch any trout so the show just became about wood because we had to make salmon that he had in the freezer. So that was that.

KBBI: I tell you I learned a lot more than I ever imagined there was about macaroni and cheese, and the Bechamel.

Lockwood: Yeah. Well, that was actually, that, that was right at the, at the beginning of the pandemic and I was like, man people are, people are probably cooking this kind of like comfort food a lot more now. And yeah, I kind of I went overboard, but I was sort of having to do that a lot with the pandemic because, you know it, for a show about where we're really, I like to do it standing next to somebody at the stove, is kind of my favorite way of doing it. The pandemic made that kind of difficult for, for a long time. So, there wound up being a lot more of me running my mouth than I really wanted to be, but you know right, so it's not like, and it's not like, you know, it is the kind of thing where maybe, you know I, I could easily do specials under the check the pantry umbrella in the future, you know, if we there's something cool to do but it's just kind of time to put it away as a, as an ongoing concern.

KBBI: Well congratulations on your 70 plus shows and a terrific run. Even I, who have horrible, horrible cooking skills, learn and enjoy from your shows. It was just terrific to listen to every week.

Lockwood: Yeah, good. Hopefully people, hopefully people enjoyed it and maybe, maybe something that they had never made before, and maybe completely bombed it, but that's okay because I do that all the time too.

KBBI: I'm looking forward to trying your duck recipe, that was a fun episode too.

Lockwood: You know, it's funny somebody, somebody just last week came up to me and they said, you know, we actually made all of your duck, all of the recipes from the duck episode, for New Year's Day and I was like, oh that's kind of cool. So, you know, it's nice to, it's nice to hear that kind of thing.

KBBI: Yeah, excellent. Well, Jeff Lockwood, thank you so much for talking with us.

Lockwood: Yeah, no problem Jay.

That was KBBI’s Jeff Lockwood and Jay Barrett talking about Check the Pantry, which wrapped up Sunday. All the show’s episodes are archived on KBBI, and available as a podcast on your favorite app.

Jay Barrett, KBBI's new News Director should be a familiar voice to our listeners. He's been contributing to Kenai Peninsula news for the last three years out of KDLL Kenai, and was the voice of The Alaska Fisheries Report from KMXT for 12 years. Jay worked for KBBI about 20 years ago as the Central Peninsula Reporter at KDLL.