- Hello, everyone, welcome.

My name is Sheri Castle.

I am a North Carolina cookbook author, food writer, cooking teacher, and I'm also the host of "The Key Ingredient," a wonderful cooking show produced by PBS North Carolina.

I want to welcome you all this evening and thank you so much for joining us.

I hope you enjoy watching this very special preview of the brand new cooking competition from PBS.

It's called "The Great American Recipe."

It's an eight part series, and we got a good taste of the first episode.

So now, it is my privilege to introduce you to our very special guest this evening evening.

Her name is Bambi Daniels, and as you have just seen, she is a contestant on this great new show.

She's right down the road in Winston-Salem, and I just cannot wait to talk to her about her experience.

Hello, Bambi, how are you?

- Hello!

I'm doing great.

I hope you're, and I hope you enjoyed the screening.

- Oh my goodness, yes, it was delightful and quite the cliff hanger.

I have so many questions now.

Was it fun for you to watch?

- Yes, it was.

I love it, I love it.

- So tell me, let's kinda start from the beginning, as it were, how did you come to be on the show?

- Well, one of the assistant producers inboxed me on Instagram.

At first, I thought it was a fluke.

I was like, okay, is this real?

But they were giving me concrete information.

So I said, okay.

I sent my email, and then they sent me all the information and I sent in a tape.

I auditioned.

I cooked a meal.

I think it was like quick meal, 30 minutes, and I became one of the wonderful talented 10.

- That is amazing.

Had you ever aspired to cook on television before, or was your main passion home cooking?

- Well, I kinda thought about it, but you know how you always have those doubts and those things that are talking in your ear, you're not good enough, you won't do this, you won't do that.

And I was like, okay, well, this time when the opportunity showed itself, I was like, I'm gonna do it, win, lose, or draw.

I don't care.

Burn, baby, burn.

[both laugh] - It does take a little bit of that wonderful enthusiasm and confidence.

So you opened with a recipe that is very important to you and your family, your amazing looking bacon topped macaroni cheese.

I wish I had, I was gonna say a bowl full, but, actually, I wish I could eat straight outta the dish at this point.

So tell me how you came to choose that recipe.

- Well, in my family, macaroni and cheese, mac and cheese is just a staple at every Sunday dinner.

And everybody tries to outdo everybody with this traditional recipe.

So this person may add this and that person may add this.

Now we do it two ways.

We use the Velveeta cheese to make it creamier, or we just make the cheese and egg, and that's it, cheese, egg, and, of course, French mustard.

And then we make a sauce.

We don't make a roux.

We don't add the flour.

We just make it a cream sauce, and then we put in our noodles, and then we top it with the cheese and put it in the oven.

But each person has their own twist to it.

And then the person who is always... My niece Kiana, she always wins, and she gets to feature her mac and cheese at Thanksgiving.

- Wow, well, now that you've been on TV with yours, do you think that's going to dethrone her, or is she still the winner on the family table?

- No, honey, there are levels.

There are levels in our family of cooking.

And no, honey, I don't care.

We have a cousin who went to Johnson and Wales, graduated.

She don't even cook for Thanksgiving.

[claps] [both laughs] - And I think that's funny.

That is good, and that's how a lot of times families work.

Families want what they want, don't they?

- Yes, that's right.

- So clearly you're a Southerner as am I. I understand that you grew up in South Carolina, but now you call North Carolina home.

You know, we Southerners, we have a lot of stories behind our ingredients and behind our recipes.

Is there an ingredient that you always have on hand in your kitchen or any little thing just if you were to head off to the moon that you have to take with you?

- Garlic, [claps] garlic, garlic, garlic.

Garlic makes everything better.

[cross talk] [Bambi laughs] - So tell me about that.

I mean, that speaks to me.

I don't know what I thought you were gonna say about it.

I wasn't expecting garlic, but I think that's a great answer.

Did you have some opportunities to incorporate your love of garlic in your cooking along the way on the show?

- Oh, yes, in everything, but the mac and cheese.

So I put garlic in everything, mhm.

- So how did you come about cooking?

Have you cooked your whole life?

Did you learn from a family member, or where did that come from?

- Yes, now, that's our love language.

That's my family's love language.

We didn't grow up going to restaurants, because we lived off of the land.

What we grew and what we raised, that's what we ate.

So everybody, even the little bitty baby, has to be a part of the cooking process.

So I was always around my grandmother, my grandfather, the aunts, the uncles who were cooking all the time.

So about 10 years old, my cousin Jimmy showed me how to cook chicken back for my grandmother.

So that's when I started cooking.

- And that's when you started.

And so, cooking for your family, obviously that's something you love and you're very comfortable with.

So how different was cooking on television, especially in a lively competition show?

- [claps] Oh my goodness, there is nothing that you can do or prepare you for what takes place.

I'm telling you, reality TV is reality TV, especially when it comes to cooking shows.

What happens happens.

It's not staged.

Everything goes crazy.

It's like Murphy's law, what will go wrong, will go wrong.

- Well, you seemed to recover from in the first episode beautifully.

So can you tell me a little bit like what a day would've been like?

Did you make everything once?

Were there lots of stops and starts?

Tell me a little bit about what your favorite day there was like.

- Oh, I like the part where you said were there stops and starts?

No.

[laughs] Because when I cut my finger, they were like, "You know, you're losing time."

I was like, okay, we're not gonna stop.

- You're also losing blood, but I guess that wasn't their priority.

[laughs] - They're like, no, we're not gonna stop.

So we constantly cooked.

You cooked, I mean, and you had to cook in the timeframe.

So there was never any stops.

So if anything went wrong, if your leg fell off, you just attached it back and kept cooking.

My favorite, it was every day.

Every day was fun.

Every day was fun.

I guess my favorite days were when we teased each other, we laughed.

I think when we were getting tired, we became sillier.

[laughs] So those were my favorite times.

Even though we were tired, we would tease each other and say, "Oh, you can do it," or, "Oh, I'm gonna win.

"You're not gonna win, because I'm doing this."

And we would all laugh and create the mess.

- Well, I'm encouraged.

It sounds like you made some genuine friendships there.

You were a comradery.

And of course, food makes friendships too.

You were all there, because of a united passion.

- Yes, not only united passion, but we became friends, because our stories were so similar.

Everybody has that grandmother.

Everybody has that uncle Joe that took them fishing or showed them how to grill.

Everybody had that grandfather that showed them a special skill on how to do certain things, not just only cook, but gave them wisdom.

So when we started sharing our stories, we saw that we were more similar than different.

- Mhm, right.

Did you have an opportunity to taste the recipes from the others?

Did y'all put it all out on the table at the end like you do at the end of a dinner party, or was that not part of it?

- Yes, yes!

After the judges finished, we would go and sneak when the cameras were off, we would go and sneak a piece of this and sneak a piece of that.

And we were like, oh my goodness, that was good.

That was great.

That was amazing.

I mean, sometime we would hope that, okay, the judges don't eat all of the food, because if they don't eat all the food, we have something to eat.

We have taste and, oh, we just loved that part when we had just even a little piece.

We had Dan's calamari and oh my goodness.

We were breaking it in pieces, 'cause it was amazing.

It was so fresh.

And oh my goodness just like chef Terry said, it was popping.

I mean, it was amazing, and we were just having us a ball.

It was like a food festival.

[laughs] - That is amazing.

So we actually have a question that has come in from one of our viewers this evening, and that person would like for me to ask you, so what was the hardest part of the show?

Was it something you expected or something you couldn't have anticipated?

- [laughs] The hardest part was the time.

Let me tell you something.

I'm a Southern cook, always been a Southern cook.

Honey, I cook slow and low.

And of course, you're not giving everything until you arrive on set.

So I was like, what, what, are you serious?

60 minutes, 90 minutes to do this?

Okay, all right, [claps] come on, universe, let's do it.

Come on, Jesus and all the 12 disciples, we gonna do this, because we're gonna win.

[laughs] - That is exciting.

And it is nothing like that time.

That clock is at a different speed when you're cooking on television, I'm sure.

- Yes, and then when they're calling out, "You have 20 minutes, you have 15 minutes, you have 10," and you just start shaking.

I mean, I was standing up there and I was shaking, and I was like, I can't stop shaking, I can't stop shaking.

[laughs] So even now if my husband says, "Oh, Sonji" or, "Bambi," whatever he chooses to call me that day, he's like, "Okay, you had 15 minutes."

I was like, what, are you serious right now?

[laughs] - [laughs] I think you need to wake him up in the middle of the night and tell him or just get him some time, say, you know what time it is or some such.

Get him back just a little bit.

So how was it cooking in that space?

I mean, obviously, most of us do not cook in a huge kitchen in a beautiful barn near Richmond with that many people around us.

Was there a period of adjustment to learn how to cook with things where they were within reach in your own kitchen?

- There was never a period of adjustment.

It was so unfamiliar, and you know how you are used to your kitchen?

- Oh yeah.

- That particular knife or that particular spoon is just magical to you.

So getting everything new and just in different surroundings and having the camera and having the lights, it was crazy.

It was simply crazy.

So you adjusted to the craziness of it all, and you did your best.

You brought your A game.

- Yeah, well, are you still developing new recipes, or when you got home, were you like, woo, not gonna do that again for a while?

How's your cooking these days?

- Yes, [claps] I am still developing great recipes and having fun.

I developed a, what was it, a banana pudding waffle.

Oh my goodness, I made that- - Now say that again.

I wanna make sure I didn't miss it.

A banana pudding... - Waffle.

- Waffle, oh my goodness.

- I made it for Father's Day.

It tasted just like banana pudding, but it was a waffle with the banana pudding toppings.

Oh, it was delicious.

- That sounds amazing.

So for the recipes that you did prepare on the show, is there a time that those are gonna be available to viewers?

Do you know if that going to be available and maybe what that timeframe is?

- Yes, now I think the timeframe is early fall when the cookbook will be out.

- Oh, so there's a cookbook that goes with it.

That's exciting.

I mean, obviously you've cooked for many years and have great expertise.

Was this your first time with having to write down your recipes in a form that someone else could use them?

Or have you always been a recipe writer on cards or something?

- This was my second time.

And being a home cook, a Southern cook, you used to pinch this and a pinch that, so I was like, okay, okay, how am I gonna do that?

The first time I wrote a recipe was very simple.

I just did a vegan calamari.

It was just pasta.

- Really?

- Yes, pasta, heart of palms, a dash of this, a dash of that, and I sauteed it, olive oil, very simple, but these were complicated recipes.

And I was like, okay.

Well, I just squeezed the mustard.

I don't know how much mustard.

[laughs] So you couldn't say a squeeze a mustard, and you couldn't say a dash of salt.

You had to take time to measure it.

And I was like, okay, well, this should be about two tablespoons, or this should be a teaspoon.

- I understand that, because for those of us that just cook intuitively, 'cause it's making supper, it's very different to have to write down a recipe.

I appreciate your effort in having to do that.

So you have mentioned mustard, you probably didn't notice, two or three times, and I know that you're raised in South Carolina.

Do you have any idea why South Carolinians love mustard so much?

- Oh my goodness, it gives that kick to everything.

Oh, oh my, it just gives that bite.

It has a bite, and it has to be the yellow mustard.

I'm not gonna mention a brand, but I'm just saying [laughs] it has to be the yellow mustard.

It has to be in the macaroni and cheese to give it a bite.

It has to be on that hot fish that just came out of the grease.

It has to be that yellow mustard.

Dijon mustard is wonderful, but, honey, that yellow mustard with that bite that makes it all.

- Sure thing, I can hear it.

I can hear the sincerity.

So when you were there, clearly you had to do your own cooking.

It was, in fact, your recipe in your competition, but were there lots of assistants and crew people floating around?

What was it like when the camera turned off or between takes.

What was the environment like?

- Everybody was looking at you and you were looking at them, because only thing that they were there for was to clean up.

So yeah, you did everything, everything from the beginning to the end.

- And so, it's one thing to have your family assess your food and so forth, but to be judged, even though they were the most congenial judges, that's a very different thing.

Tell us a little bit about that process.

- Now, I was very nervous because, again, they don't tell you everything.

So we were like, oh, thinking in our mind, it's okay, we're gonna have celebrity judges, mhm, but not the celebrity judges.

So when they walked out, I was like, are you serious?

That's her, that's him?

No, this is not happening right now.

And then I was like, okay, it cannot be any worse than my family.

It cannot be worse than my family.

[both laugh] So I was like, okay, I gotta calm down.

I'm gonna do this.

So, let's make it happen.

And they were very gracious.

They critiqued our dishes, and they gave suggestions on how to make it better and not judged it in a way where they were like, oh, well, that's not the right technique, or you're not doing that right, and you're not sauteing that right, that's incorrect, because they were mindful of that these were our family recipes.

So even if you used a wooden spoon for something that was supposed to be used for spatula, not saying that somebody did that, but, hey, they didn't judge that.

- But don't you think that's part of the camaraderie and the conviviality of food is a good cook wants other people be good cooks as well.

It's not a selfish thing.

It's a very giving thing, not just at the table, but from the heart, I believe, as well.

- Mhm, yes, 'cause you do.

When you sit down and you eat something that someone gives you, because I always say they're giving you life.

They're giving you a part of themselves.

So when you get it, if it doesn't taste the best to you, you can make a suggestion.

You could say, okay, well, sweetheart, baby, that was a little dry.

Add a little bit more milk or, honey, that didn't quite do.

I think, hmm mm, [laughs], you need to start back over.

And if you do it outta love, because you want them to become better.

- Right, right, and you do want it out from that love and so forth.

So, there are eight episodes in your show.

How long did you guys work on this?

Were you up there for weeks, months, days?

What was your timeline?

- Forever.

No, [laughs], [claps] we stayed there for eight weeks.

We were there for eight weeks.

- Wow.

Were you sequestered like a jury or did you get to get out a little bit?

What was it like to be there?

- No, that was our home.

We called it the island.

So we were acting silly and when we had our downtime, we were like, okay, it's 94 days here on the island.

[laughs] - That's a long time.

That's a long time to be away from home.

But now that you are back home, do people recognize you?

I mean, you obviously have lots of great neighbors and well wishers in Winston-Salem and across the state.

Has it changed your daily life?

Can you still go to Harris Teeter in sunglasses and so forth, or what's it like?

- Yes, I still can.

And it's fun.

It's so fun, because today I am silly.

I embarrass my kids all the time.

I was in Sam's today, and this little girl was doing her TikTok that I got behind her, and I danced on her TikTok.

And then I was like, "Tag me."

And when she realized who I was, she was like [gasps].

[laughs] I was like, "Oh, baby, I'm just normal."

[laughs] - I think that is so much fun.

I can see why they loved you so much.

Your personality comes through.

So, was there anything that you wish you had had an opportunity to prepare on the show that you didn't, because of either the topic or the time constraints?

Was there anything that you're like, wow, I really wish I could have given them this, that, or the other?

- Well, I think I gave them my all, I mean, my top, top recipes that my family loves, so I put it all out on the table.

So I don't think I left anything undone.

- That is good.

So, what is coming next for you?

You're making banana pudding waffles, but what else do you have in the works that you can share with us either personally, professionally or on TikTok?

[laughs] - Well, we are revitalizing our homestead, which is Davis Farms.

So I really want to do a cookbook, because, again, like I was telling you, all of my family cooks.

There are so many levels with the people who cook, and I want everybody contribute a recipe to the Davis Farm cookbook.

And I want to one day go around and talk to great people who cook and just stay in the same vein as "The Great American Recipe" to find out why they do what they do.

- And yes, and there's always a good answer that.

So we just had another question from another one of our viewers who said that they believe that they're able to find your famous smoked mac and cheese online, but after the show or after judging, was there anything you changed about it or did you just say, no, by golly, this is my mac, and this is the way I make it?

- Well, I tell people to make it your way.

You make it your way.

You look at my recipe, and then you put your twist on it, because you may not wanna add smoked Gouda.

You may not wanna add the bacon, because you may not want the meat or, I don't know, vegan, vegetarian.

I don't know the difference.

I do apologize, but maybe you don't wanna add a certain part of the recipe.

Then go ahead and do it.

Make it your own.

That's what we do in our home.

That's what we do in our family.

We make it our own.

So make it your own.

But honey, always add smoked paprika.

[both laugh] - That would go a long way toward a lot of things, won't it?

[laughs] I think that's one of those ingredients, 'cause obviously I love ingredients.

Well, if more people just knew about the little things that can make such a big difference.

And do you have other pieces of advice like that for home cooks, any little thing that might make them more comfortable or feel more creative that you just would whisper in their ear if you were given the opportunity?

- Yes, cook with love.

Don't be afraid to try things.

Just go ahead and cook it.

And if it doesn't come out the first time, you can try, try again, and make sure you tell your family that this is a new recipe, I want you to try it.

Don't be so thin skin that if they don't like it, you're like, well, I'm not gonna ever make it again.

Ask them, hey, what's wrong with it?

Tell me what I need to add, or if it's not good at all, don't make it.

Just ask them what is it that you need to do to improve, and just do it.

- So what is your favorite thing that someone else makes for you?

I mean, you obviously cook for a lot of people.

I hope someone returns the favor.

If you could just wave a wand right now and have someone you know, real or maybe imaginary, make something for you, what would it be?

- Okay, my niece Kiana, we call her Kiki, she makes this stir fry, and she makes it on her hibachi grill.

I love that.

I love it.

She makes it for me when I come and visit Chester, or she'll just make it and she'll call, and she'll say, "I made it.

"I thought about you."

So, I love it even when I'm here in Winston.

So that's my favorite dish from here.

- That sounds amazing.

Well, believe or not, we're almost out of time.

So I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart.

I feel like we are already fast food friends, cannot wait to meet you in person someday and to watch the rest of the show.

And I want to remind everybody that, in fact, the series, "The Great American Recipe" does begin tomorrow night.

We can look forward to this on our Friday nights.

It will come on at 9:00 p.m. on PBS North Carolina, and then come on Fridays through August 12th.

So there's lots of exciting recipes, cooking, revealing stories, drama.

I admire you that you can keep it all in.

You can contain and not letting things slip.

And of course, for those that might not be in front of their television on Friday nights, like all great PBS North Carolina shows, they're available online and through streaming in a whole host of ways.

There are plenty of opportunities.

Nobody has to miss a thing.

So, since we're talking about ingredients, I wanna take just a moment to say that I am lucky that I get to make a season two of "The Key Ingredient."

We're about to start shooting in a few days.

- [claps] She's a star!

- Thank you so much.

It is going to come out next spring, and our ingredients are, for next time, let me see if I can remember them here, they are in no particular order strawberries, blueberries, figs, country ham, trout, eggs, rice, and tomatoes.

So again, thank you so much for being part of this this evening.

And I cannot wish you even more success.

Thank you so much.

- Thank you, thank you.

And it was a pleasure meeting you over Zoom.

Hopefully we will get to have dinner or lunch.

- We're gonna make that happen.

If you'll make a banana pudding waffle, I'll make something for you.

Is that a deal?

- Yes, that's a deal.

- All right, thank you.

- Many blessings.