Ladies and gentlemen, start your mixers, the Taste of Home Cooking School returns to the Northwest Montana Fairgrounds tonight and promises to be one of the best yet. Not only will there be great new recipes, door prizes and give-aways, there's also a new face.

This year's culinary specialist, Eric Villegas, said he's looking forward to his first trip to Montana and said he's got something special for attendees this year.

“This Taste of Home Cooking School will be a little different, for people who are used to these,” Villegas said. “Thanks to my television background, I'm very high energy and I can sustain it for the entire three-hour program. In fact, they should install seatbelts in the chairs, I'm that exciting.”

Villegas got his passion for cooking from his father, and decided to make it his life, attending Anne Willan's La Varenne Ecole de Cuisine and Steven Spurrier's Academie du Vin in France.

“I got into cooking because I really couldn't do anything else,” Villegas said. “I was fortunate because my parents were really into entertaining. My father was a physician and we traveled a lot and he loved to eat.”

Although Villegas fell in love with the grand dining rooms and upscale restaurants he encountered in his travels, he put his own twist on his cooking. Opening his first restaurant in 1987, Villegas stayed in the restaurant business until 2008.

“I made my name in 'local' cuisine,” Villegas said. “I trained in Europe, so I took all these great European recipes like paella and bouillabaisse and those traditionally European dishes, and I pulled them apart and put them together with local ingredients.”

“Local ingredients” for Villegas included things like whitefish from his native Michigan, where he currently lives with his wife and daughter. In fact, Villegas' love for local ingredients and blending culinary styles led to the success of his television show, “A Fork in the Road with Eric Villegas.”

Airing on PBS, the show ran for eight years, with the first four being centered in Michigan. The last four years were aired nationally, and the show won two regional Emmy awards. And although it has been off the air recently, Villegas said they are beginning filming for the “Great Lakes, Great Food” edition of the show.

“I really enjoy searching out local ingredients, wherever I am, and I'm looking forward to discovering what Montana and Kalispell in particular has to offer,” Villegas said. “I'm really privileged to get to do these Taste of Home shows, and I'm excited to visit Montana.”

Villegas said he has been a Taste of Home Culinary Specialist for almost two years now, and said he got his start by attending a Cooking School himself.

“It was a bizarre set of circumstances that got me into it,” Villegas said. “I had no idea what Taste of Home was, I had never heard of it at all. I was asked to do a cookbook signing of my own book at a woman's show and I did a cooking demonstration while I was there. When I had finished, they asked me if I was staying for the cooking show. I looked at them and said I thought I was the cooking show. They took me into an auditorium with something like 11,000 people and I was completely blown away.”

Villegas said he's particularly pleased with the recipes he will be presenting at this year's show.

“I haven't been more excited about a series of recipes ever,” he said. “They're just really great, and from great companies. We've got a wonderful coffee cake, braised ribs and more, but I think my hands-down favorites are the sausage stuffed mushrooms. I make those all the time and I just love them.”

The Taste of Home Cooking School has been happening for more than 50 years and there are more than 300 shows each year with an average of 1,000 people at every show. Villegas said part of the reason it remains so popular is because it offers such a great value for attendees.

“We've got some great things to give away, and the goody-bags are worth their weight in gold, with all the giveaways they have,” Villegas said. “It does not make fiscal sense not to go. For that ticket price, you get it back in the bags alone, then there's the chance to win the amazing door prizes, and if you win the recipes we make, you not only get a great meal, you get a really nice cooking vessel. Taste of Home offers great, simple dishes packed with tons of flavor, and there's something to please everyone at the show, no matter what your cooking skill level happens to be. People should be prepared for a lot of fun, prepared to laugh and prepared to learn. This is going to be a great show.”