But she forgot to call her cousin in New Zealand and tell her, which resulted in a few unexpected inter-continental communications—both to Kundargi in the United States and to her mother in India. "They were just flipping through the channels, and they saw me," Kundargi says with a laugh. "I had forgotten she lived there."

Kundargi has been hosting her show since 1997 and has about 35 shows in the can that rerun three times a week on cable access stations in Cupertino, Los Altos and Mountain View. Each show demonstrates a vegetarian meal that fuses Kundargi's love for Indian spices with standard American meals. And now, those culinary stylings are making their way back across the Pacific Ocean—in addition to grabbing hold in New Zealand, Kundargi's show is also under consideration for a slot in the Philippines.

Not bad for a locally-produced show that Kundargi tapes in her own kitchen.

"About six or seven years ago, my daughter went to kindergarten, and I had to decide whether I wanted to go back into my accounting career," says Kundargi, who came to the United States from India 19 years ago. "But my husband encouraged me to pursue my passion."

Kundargi originally learned how to cook from her mother, who Kundargi says considered cooking a "survival skill." When Kundargi was in the second grade, her mother was off visiting relatives, so Kundargi attempted to cook something for her father, who was notoriously hard to please. "My father was not one to give lavish compliments, but he praised me," she says.

But it never occurred to Kundargi to consider cooking as a career until long after she had arrived in Cupertino and started a family with her husband, who owns his own software start-up company. Kundargi has always taped the show in her Monta Vista kitchen, which requires the lights, cameras and crew to squeeze into her breakfast nook. "With the first show, there was a lot of learning," she says. "But after that, we just kept trying to make it better. We would get together afterwards for constructive criticism, but this was still a totally new field."

Kundargi's longtime friend Rekha Marathe came on board early to help with set decoration—Marathe decides how the food will best look on camera and arranges the flowers or fruit in the background. "The basic intent of the show was really novel," Marathe says. "I've enjoyed working with her, but it takes a lot to produce a show."

To do just that, Kundargi rents cameras and equipment from KMVT in Mountain View, which is also where she edits footage. She tapes an episode about once a month, and each episode takes three weeks to prepare for airing. Over the years, a number of technical aspects of the show have changed, including a move from De Anza College to KMVT and the evolution from video to digital tapes. Crew members are all volunteers like John Heather of Cupertino Senior TV Productions who has helped with Kundargi's last three shows.

"She saw me at KMVT and asked if I was interested in helping her experiment with a third camera for the show," Heather says. "The nice thing is that you get to eat lunch afterwards—that's her only request."

Kundargi crafts her meals from cookbooks, but retools the recipes to better fit with her style. Unlike many Indians, Kundargi is a vegetarian, but she also uses traditional Indian spices to flavor dishes that normally rely on fat for taste. Previous meals have included spiced pasta and veggie burgers flavored with ginger and green chiles. "Eating food without green or red chiles is like having a childhood with no candy," she declares.

A number of people must agree, because Kundargi started receiving emails recently from foreign nonprofit television stations looking to run her show. The only money exchanging hands is reimbursement for Kundargi's costs for mailing the digital tapes across the ocean. Other entities that have noticed the show are the awards festivals that honor public access shows, such as the Western Access Video Excellence Awards and the Hometown Video Festival—both have honored "Indian Vegetarian Gourmet." The latter awarded Kundargi with an award in the Cultural and International perspectives category in July 2004.

Kundargi's name is also well known around Cupertino—she helped stage the Cupertino Diwali festival, and she's vice-chair of the Arts Commission. And while her name may be growing in popularity overseas, she's really just concerned with how her cooking affects those closest to home.

"It really started because I wanted to know how I could add spices to food to make my kids eat," she says.