Alabama Public Television is helping Alabamians cook and eat healthy foods this spring with this new one-hour special focusing on the wealth of fresh produce and foods raised by Alabama farmers.

Cooking Fresh features southern chef Curtis Aikens, a charismatic professional whose recipes blend his Southern upbringing with a decade of living in California and extensive travels in the U.S. and Europe. A popular Food Network veteran, Aikens has also entertained national television audiences in appearances on “Oprah,” ABC’s “Good Morning America,” and the PBS children’s series “Reading Rainbow”.

Cooking Fresh also visits three local Alabama farms where ingredients for Aikens’ recipes are harvested: Snow’s Bend Farm, an organic vegetable farm located 10 miles west of Tuscaloosa that grows mostly specialty, heirloom, gourmet and ethnic vegetables; Bay Boy Farms, a Lowndes County inland shrimp farm that is stocked with Pacific White jumbo shrimp; and Chilton County peach grower Burnette Farms.