Bridget Lancaster and Julia Collin Davison make putting together a food show look easy.

It’s not.

“We’re super women, right?” Lancaster said with a laugh.

As hosts of the PBS shows, “America’s Test Kitchen” and “Cook’s Country,” the pair are busy from morning until night. It’s not unheard of for them to put in 12-, 13-hour days filming and editing shows. 

Hear all about their adventures while they demonstrate what they do best when they appear Friday and Saturday, Oct. 4 and 5, at the Southern Arizona Home Show in the Tucson Convention Center. There, the show continues through Sunday, Oct. 5. 

What is shown on television has been in the works for quite some time by the time it’s broadcast and represents only a bit of the work that goes into each show. They call it pre- and post-production. Throughout the year, Lancaster said, they are working on scripts, not for the hosts or chefs because what they say on camera is unscripted but for the recipes. 

“It’s a four to five camera operation depending on what we’re shooting,” she said. For example, “we really need a closeup because we’re going to be pouring honey over something and you want to get that gorgeous food shot.”

On production days the person who will be on camera begins their workday at about 5 a.m. in the studio but that’s just for hair and makeup. The cooks —and there are several — show up and begin their work after 5 but before 8 a.m. when the filming starts. They shoot five recipes a day more or less. The tasting and equipment segments are filmed separately as are the science segments and any other segment not wholly about the recipe.

While the recipe is being demonstrated and filmed there’s a chef off camera cooking the same dish who is about 20 seconds behind the talent.   

“That way if we make a mistake or a camera didn’t catch something, they can run it right out onto the set,” Lancaster said. 

There’s also a chef cooking ahead. Consider a pot roast or chicken.

“We’ll get to the point where we say, ‘OK, we’re going to put this in the oven and let it roast for about 45 minutes until the breast meat reaches 165 degrees.’ Then the director says, ‘Cut,’ and then a whole army of white-coated people come in and they whisk away the food that we were cooking, They’ll replace it with a twin of that food ready to come out of the oven or ready for the lid to come off to give the big reveal,” Lancaster said.

For special days such as Thanksgiving everything gets expanded.

“At the end of shooting on a day that’s all about Thanksgiving or turkeys we might go through 30, 35 turkeys a day to shoot that segment, to make that 23 minutes of food per episode” Lancaster said. “It’s just because we’ve learned that it’s better to have too many on hand than to have a bunch of (paid crew members) waiting around.”

What happens to all that food? It doesn’t get wasted.

“It all gets packed up,” she added. “We can’t donate it because too many people have had their hands on it.”

Instead, there’s a refrigerator called the Take Home Refrigerator. “It’s a great perk,” she added.

At the home show, both Lancaster and Collin Davison, who are in real life very good friends, will be demonstrating a couple of dishes and sharing behind-the-scenes secrets. Once they arrive, they will also be sampling a bit of the Old Pueblo’s local cuisine and hopefully meeting some of their viewers.

“I’m really looking forward to our visit to Tucson — meeting some of our fans and learning more about the history of the area,” Collin Davison said. 

The Southern Arizona Home Show

WHEN: 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Friday, Saturday and Sunday, Oct. 3 through Oct. 5

WHERE:Tucson Convention Center, 260 S. Church Avenue

COST: $8, children 12 and younger/free

INFO: southernazfallhomeshow.com