I'm Francis Lamb, and this is The Splendid Table from APM American Public Media, the show for curious cooks and eaters.

It's funny, right, the little things that stick out in your memory?

Like the stuff that's, why is this even in my head? But then you start to maybe

understand why it's in your head years later. Like this moment. I'm, I don't know, I was 18 or 19,

I think. I'm home. It's summer. I'm at my parents' house. I have no idea what I'm going to do

in my life. And I am just watching an ungodly amount of TV.

And one night, I'm watching people cook on TV,

which was kind of weird.

This was the mid-90s.

But anyway, one of the women on the screen is chopping garlic,

and she goes,

now you really want to find some good, fresh garlic.

When it's really fresh, it's almost wet when you cut it.

That's it.

That random moment has stuck with me forever.

But two years later, I got my first cooking job, and that changed my life.

Okay, so it probably wasn't just because of that garlic moment on TV, but every time I think

of Mary Sue Milliken and Susan Fenninger, the chefs who were cooking on my TV that day,

I think about how many people there were like me, sitting in front of their TVs and seeing

for the first time these two make cooking seem so fun.

Now, Mary Sue and Susan are way more than just TV chefs.

They've been in business together for almost 40 years.

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