Cookbook author and public television personality Marcia Adams is awaiting a heart transplant. And though she relied on her niece to do the recipe testing, she has managed to write another book, Marcia Adams: Heart to Heart, on a laptop computer in bed.

Part journal and part cookbook, the new volume also enabled Mrs. Adams to share her experience with heart disease in a documentary of the same name that aired on WBGU-TV, Channel 27, earlier this month. It will be repeated at 10:30 a.m. March 3 and 8 p.m. March 13 on WBGU.

I've followed Mrs. Adams' career since May, 1994, when she was filming a segment of one of her PBS cooking shows at the West Point Market in Akron. At this gourmet market, the line of those seeking autographed cookbooks was 10 deep.

We had met in July, 1993, when she and I were side-by-side on a hot summer day with little breeze. We were judges at Schoenbrunn Village historical site in New Philadelphia, Ohio, at a recipe contest for authentic dutch-oven cooking.

Mrs. Adams gave Midwest cooking prominence in 1989 when she wrote her first cookbook, Cooking from Quilt Country, inspired by a series of articles she had written about Mennonite restaurants. In the next 10 years, she penned six cookbooks and starred in five public television cooking series filmed at the WBGU-TV studios in Bowling Green.

Her career was brought to a halt in June, 1998, at a cooking demonstration in Toledo for Taste of the Town when she collapsed onstage and was lifted into an ambulance.

“That was the first time it happened in public,” Mrs. Adams said in a phone interview last week. “I thought I was letting people down. I was there to do a job. I was mortified. Out of that experience I realized I could not work in public again. My pacemaker/defibrillator could not control my heartbeat.”

Mrs. Adams, who gives her age as 65, has congestive heart failure as the result of an upper respiratory viral infection. She said the defibrillator/pacemaker has saved her life “many times.”

On Feb. 2, “we thought the heart was in. We had a dress rehearsal, but the doctor discovered the heart was infected. I know I am at the top of the list.”

In November, 1999, she decided to seek a heart replacement. She kept a journal of her experiences. In it, she noticed that she referred to different recipes that were served when visitors came.

“I was known for voluptuous food. That has nothing to do with my heart damage, which came from a virus in July, 1994, that lived on in my heart. The first episode was then, but I would work anyway. I wrote the last Amish book and did the TV series.”

She feels she has a story to share about how heart disease is the No. 1 killer of women.

As for the recipes in the new book, “they are presented as if there are no restrictions, but I put in optional ways which would enable a cook to take out fat, salt, or sugar,” said Mrs. Adams, who is on oxygen 24 hours a day. “My niece [who comes to cook and test recipes three times a week] tested the recipes and my husband is getting a hand in the recipes.”

Autographed copies of the cookbook ($16 softback, $25 hardback plus $4.95 shipping) are available at www.MarciaAdams.com

Kathie Smith is The Blade's food editor. E-mail her at food@theblade.com.

First Published February 13, 2001, 11:38 a.m.