I had the good fortune to spend Tuesday afternoon with the one and only Graham Kerr, yep the man once known as "The Galloping Gourmet."
It's hard to keep up with Kerr, who just turned 76 last month, and still has plenty of "gallop."
Even prior to his sold-out dinner event for 300-plus people at Sandcreek Country Club in Chesterton Tuesday night, Kerr was busy all day jaunting around Porter County speaking at presentations arranged by his organizing hospital host Porter Health System.
At 11:30 a.m., Kerr spoke to participants of the Valparaiso Parks Department's Fit City Biggest Winner Competition at Stoner Auditorium. Porter Health System is a sponsor of the "Fit City" initiative for weight loss.
At 1 p.m., Kerr then spoke to the Porter Cardiac Rehabilitation Diet Class at Porter's Outpatient Center in Valparaiso.
"I try to keep my messages very simple for all to remember," Kerr said.
"Such as, remember, the only thing that separates the words 'treat' and "threat' is the letter 'H,' which should always symbolize the thought, 'How much?' when thinking of portion control."
The last time internationally known culinary and TV personality Kerr was in the Chicago area or anywhere near Northwest Indiana it was at a food industry event in 2001 at McCormick Place in Chicago. He was with Treena, his beloved and still very spry wife of 54 years.
For this visit, he was traveling solo.
However, he had many Treena stories to share, since his wife continues to be one of the prime motivations for his push for healthier lifestyles.
Back in 1987, Kerr said the couple was living in Palm Springs, with neighbors like Liberace and Kirk and Anne Douglas, when they experienced a catalyst for Treena to change her eating habits.
"I walked in the kitchen and saw Treena about to make a bologna sandwich for our son and I told her to stop," he said.
"I had already changed to healthy cooking and eating habits and I realized our family needed to make this same change."
Once called "the Most Dangerous Man in America" by the Heart and Stroke Foundation due to the high-fat, high-calorie recipes once featured on his influential cooking program, Kerr transformed his cooking and lifestyle to a healthful approach.
"I was always so closely associated with my 'Galloping Gourmet' style of heavy cooking and the show's identity that Treena, as my TV producer, also helped create," Kerr said.
In fact, the show, which first aired in the early 1960s, was so popular, its production had to be based in Canada in order for it be distributed worldwide, to fill the programming demand.
"At this time, there was a very strict guideline for how many hours of U.S. television shows could be shown overseas," Kerr said.
"And it seemed like most of those hours were devoted to the overseas airing of the popular U.S. night-time soap at the time 'Peyton Place.' By having production in Canada, we could get around this problem."
While spending time with Kerr on Tuesday, we swapped copies of our first edition cookbooks, an agreement we had struck earlier in the month when we chatted by phone while he was still home in Washington.
He's got a head start on me, since he's on his 29th cookbook, and I'm only on my third.
But I love the way he inscribed his copy of his original 1966 "The Graham Kerr Galloping Gourmet Cookbook," with following autograph: "Dear Philip: Great Memories, but awful Arteries!"
The opinions expressed are solely those of the writer. He can be reached at philip.potempa@nwi.com or 219.852.4327.
Today's Celebrity Birthdays
Actor Hal Holbrook is 85. Singer Bobby Lewis is 77. Comedian Dame Edna aka Barry Humphries is 76. Country singer-songwriter Johnny Bush is 75. Actress Christina Pickles (Ross' mom on "Friends") is 75. Football star turned actor Jim Brown ("The Dirty Dozen") is 74. Actress Mary Ann Mobley is 71. Actress Brenda Fricker is 65. Actress Rene Russo is 56. Actor Richard Karn ("Home Improvement") is 54. Actor Lou Diamond Phillips is 48. "Early Show" co-host Rene Syler, basketball star Michael Jordan and comedian Larry the Cable Guy are 47. Singer Chante Moore is 43. Guitarist Tim Mahoney of 311 and actor Dominic Purcell ("Prison Break") are 40. Actress Denise Richards is 39. Singer-guitarist Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day is 38. Actor Jerry O'Connell is 36. Country singer Bryan White is 36. Actor Jason Ritter ("Joan of Arcadia") is 30. Actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt and socialite Paris Hilton are 29.
