A caller once told talk-show host Lynne Rossetto Kasper, "I don't cook, I won't cook, never will cook, but I never miss 'The Splendid Table.' "

Richard Sennott Lynne Rossetto Kasper, host of NPR's "The Splendid Table" (here in her St. Paul, Minn., kitchen) will speak Oct. 24 in Carnegie. Click photo for larger image. "Food, Stories and Lore from Italy's Countryside" WHERE: Andrew Carnegie Free Library & Music Hall in Carnegie. WHEN: 2 p.m. Oct. 24. COST: $50 includes dessert, coffee and book signing; the $125 patron ticket includes a luncheon; 412-394-3353.

Even people who simply love to eat and hear talk about food tune in faithfully to her Sunday afternoon show on National Public Radio, which airs at 4 p.m. on WDUQ-FM (90.5).

The show is a lively, entertaining pastiche of short interviews with chefs, restaurant owners, specialty food makers, cookbook authors and wine experts, the latest offbeat food find by Jane and Michael Stern (authors of "Roadfood"), a trivia question, quick cooking tips, calls from listeners and music clips. Its imaginative, eclectic approach to food lures cooks and non-cooks alike.

Kasper will be in Pittsburgh Oct. 24 to talk about "Food, Stories and Lore from Italy's Countryside" at the Andrew Carnegie Free Library & Music Hall in Carnegie. The event is a fund-raiser for the library complex, which, fortunately, was undamaged in the recent flood.

Her radio show is also the title of her first cookbook, "The Splendid Table," which was subtitled "Recipes from Emilia-Romagna, the Heartland of Northern Italian Food."

Published in 1992, the book won prestigious dual awards as Cookbook of the Year in both the Julia Child and James Beard contests. It also led to her radio show.

"It was my first book, so I was bowled over," she said. "I'd done an interview on NPR about it and got a call from a young woman named Sally Swift who wanted to talk about doing an NPR show on food."

Kasper admits to being a "tad cynical" of the invitation, thinking the show would be about something trivial, such as swapping recipes.

"But we met, and, by gum, she had the same thoughts I did."

Produced by Minneapolis Public Radio, "The Splendid Table" went on the air in 1995. Originally, the show featured a single guest whom listeners called to talk with.

"Maybe 12 people were listening," she said from her home in St. Paul, Minn. "What we realized was, if you weren't interested in that topic, you wanted us off."

The format changed to shorter interviews on a variety of food topics until it evolved into the present format, but Kasper claims she's always "tweaking it."

"One of the blessings of public radio is complete freedom to be creative," Kasper said. "The show is very fresh and immediate; what we taped this week, you'll hear on Sunday.

"Sometimes, putting it together is like working with a jigsaw puzzle."

The show was named 1999 Best National Radio Show on Food by the James Beard Foundation and the 2000 Best National Syndicated Talk Show by the American Women in Radio and Television.

Five woman, including Swift, help Kasper produce the show, which takes four days to tape. They do 29 shows a year, plus two or three fund-raisers.

After nearly a decade of feeling the pulse of American food, Kasper has noticed changes in food trends and habits.

"Cooks are very practical today with concerns for time and health, but also experimental with a spontaneous approach to food," she said.

"The big formal dinner party where you knock yourself out for three days -- that's toast ... it's done ... over."

Surprisingly, the majority of callers are men, college age to early 30s. They have specific questions, such as how to make a dish they enjoyed in a certain restaurant or a food in a certain country, what to do with a saute pan or how to feed themselves in 15 minutes.

"Everyone wants to know something about cooking, even if they don't cook," she said in a 1¹*₂-hour telephone interview. "Our biggest problem is finding enough women callers."

Born and raised in northern New Jersey, Kasper's great dream as a teenager was to study acting and drama at Carnegie Tech (now Carnegie Mellon University).

Instead, she studied at what she joked was "the school-of-the-month club," attending colleges in Ohio and the Midwest, ending up in New York City in the late 1960s.

"I fell backwards into food," the 50-something said. "I often wonder what would have happened if I'd had the nerve at 18 to go to Carnegie Tech."

Alternately, she wandered along "a lot of yellow brick roads," catering, teaching Chinese cooking, consulting for industry (the connection between food, people and place) and marriage.

In 1976, husband Frank, a software importer/exporter, was transferred to Denver.

The food revolution was just beginning.

Since Kasper loved to teach, she directed her energies to creating and running the largest cooking school in Colorado.

Her husband was transferred again in 1981 to Belgium, where Kasper discovered the Emilia-Romagna region of Northern Italy.

"I kept going back to that region again and again and again," she said. "I'd be doing a freelance piece in France for Bon Appetit and tacking more time on to go there."

It was the beginning of 10 years of research on "The Splendid Table."

In 1985 the Kaspers settled in St. Paul, where Lynne concentrated on the book and continued to write articles for The New York Times, The Washington Post and Food and Wine.

A supporter of the Slow Food movement since its early days in Italy, she said she buys "fantastic" organic produce in her hometown and praises Minnesota for its environmental commitment.

"We have such an incredible group of farmers, artisans and people doing great work, she said. "We've had 37 food co-ops in the state for 25 years."

Her last appearance in Pittsburgh was in June 2003, when she spoke about food and place at the International Heritage Development Conference at the Westin Convention Center hotel.

The only child in a loving family where both sets of grandparents were Italian immigrants, she was raised on what turned out to be a healthful diet.

"We always sat down to a meal where four or five fresh veggies were on the table, plus a big green salad that my mother tossed at the table, and a meat," she said.

The abundance of meat was something the second-generation Rossetto didn't fully appreciate. To many people raised in rural Italy, however, meat was something you ate only two or three times a year.

"My grandmother was very proud we could have meat every day."

What three things are always found in her fridge?

Without missing a beat, she replied, "Butter, tamarind concentrate and fresh vegetables ... more than you can possibly imagine."

For the uninitiated, like perhaps you and me, tamarind concentrate is an Oriental seasoning.