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Dementia Care ...pages 9 - 10
Northwest
Prime Time
CELEBRATING LIFE AFTER 50 IN THE PUGET SOUND REGION SINCE 1986
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www.NorthwestPrimeTime.com
VOL. 19 NO. 9 NOVEMBER 2019
Dick Stein and Nancy Leson
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re you a fan of KNKX's radio program Food for Thought? The weekly show features Dick Stein, host of the station’s Midday Jazz show, and Nancy Leson, well-known food writer and cooking instructor. Every week, Dick and Nancy share their views on cooking and eating as they joke, bicker and laugh. They have fun together while discussing anything and everything related to food. Think Car Talk, NPR’s long-running radio program, except Dick and Nancy discuss edibles instead of automobiles. As Dick explains, “We’re a couple of friends talking about cooking and eating. Of course, the show is about
Photo courtesy Justin Steyer, KNKX
Hosts of the local radio program about food—Food for Thought
food, but mostly we want to entertain each other and hopefully the people listening will have fun, too.” They both love to cook, and discuss recipes and their latest cooking adventures, but, as Dick says, “We’re not chefs, we’re just a couple of everyday people who like to talk about it. I think we have the most fun when we disagree. We’re good enough friends that we can tell each other ‘you’re full of it.’ ”
“Yes,” says Nancy. “We’re like an old married couple giving each other the business. Our banter works because we have the same sensibilities and grew up in similar households. In the end, we truly love and respect one another. We are the yin to each other’s yang.” A Food for Thought retrospective earlier this year had the two looking back on some of their favorite shows – these exchanges illustrate the
couple’s dynamic: Nancy exclaims, laughing, “Our Great Bagel Bake-Off! My one-hour bagels versus your three-day bagels! Dick: “And guess which won? Mine.” “No!” responds Nancy emphatically. Dick: “That’s right, it came out a push (a tie) ...at least that’s what you claimed, and I let it go.” Later online he continued on page 18
Nancy Leson
Dick Stein
Dick Stein started his radio career back Nancy Leson is an award-winning food when he was in the Air Force stationed writer, radio personality, cooking instructor, in Alaska. In addition to co-hosting and public speaker and she leads international producing Food for Thought, he’s hosted jazz food tours with Earthbound Expeditions. She and other shows with KNKX since 1992. was restaurant critic and food writer for The “I’ve been a jazz fan since I was a kid,” Seattle Times for nearly two decades. says Dick, who grew up in New Rochelle, Nancy started cooking when she was NY. “I used to go to Birdland as an underage still a child but feels that she learned much kid. I got to see Stan Getz, John Coltrane of what she knows about food during her first and the Maynard Ferguson Big Band. I career: waiting tables. She started in her teens can’t tell you how many different acts we and continued for 17 years. “I could always saw. Me and my friend, Frank, would go move around and get a job anywhere,” says Dick Stein and Nancy Leson in their younger days. The two have so much down a little set of stairs where you could in common but never met until they started Food for Thought 13 years ago. the adventurous Nancy. buy a ticket, just like at a movie theater. We And move around she did. Between were 15 or 16 and really felt like a couple Philadelphia and her current home in of sophisticates.” They would also stand outside of the Metropole listening to jazz, Edmonds, she lived in South Jersey, California, Puerto Rico and Anchorage, freezing but taking in the fog of warm air that wafted out whenever anyone came among other places. or went, smelling of cigarette smoke, perfume and liquor. “To our 15-year-old “When you live in Anchorage, you always have to stop in Seattle when noses, it smelled like heaven,” he recalls fondly. going anywhere. I had a close friend in Seattle I often stayed with. I fell in love When he joined the Air Force, Dick started out in teletype maintenance with the place as we walked around Pike Place Market and ate at wonderful and cross-trained into radio. Soon enough he had a part-time radio job off-base, restaurants. I finally moved here in 1988.” and stayed with radio after leaving the Air Force. Long before joining KNKX, he A native of Philadelphia, Nancy is the oldest of four children. “I pretty hosted country, classical, top-40 and, for five years, had a call-in talk radio show. much left home as soon as I possibly could,” she says. “In fact, even before that, “After five years of the call-in show, I thought I was done with radio,” says I went to a small Quaker school on scholarship that I got on my own. It was an Dick. “It was very stressful.” extraordinary experience. The school had a strong arts bent in addition to the In 1976, he and his then-girlfriend decided to move to Washington. They academics. We were free to pursue our own interests.” Pursuing her own interests lived in a ’59 VW bus for six months, seeing the country and visiting friends along has been a good choice for Nancy. the way before settling in the Tacoma area. They weren’t hippies, he claims, “but At age 32, she got a degree in Journalism from the University of we sure looked like it.” Washington. “Going to school while working was exhausting,” she recalls. Dick still lives in Tacoma, although now with his two cats and wife of 30 years, After graduation, she “was broke” and continued waiting tables for a year Cheryl De Groot. “She would say 30 long years,” quips Dick. Cheryl is a nationally at Saleh al Lago, then a high-end Italian restaurant in Green Lake. “Then noted metalsmith and jewelry designer who once worked as a shipyard welder. I saw a job offer for an unpaid internship in the food section at the Seattle In between moving to Tacoma and starting with KNKX, Dick began Weekly.” She sent a funny cover letter...My mother always wanted me to be a chimney sweep business (named Pickwick), freelanced as an advertising a doctor. Maybe now, at least, I can tell her I’m an intern? Call me, I’m your copywriter, and dabbled in voice-over, character modeling and corporate films. girl. “That was the last job I ever looked for. Every other job came over the “I never thought I would be in radio again.” But, as fate would have it, his transom.” The Weekly immediately gave her a restaurant column. That column neighbor across the street, Nick Morrison, was the morning jazz host at KNKX enabled Nancy to transition out of restaurants and into a job editing Sasquatch (then KPLU). “He talked me into filling in at the station,” says Dick. “One thing Publishing’s Best Places series. She later worked as the back-up restaurant continued on page 18
continued on page 18