Cook's Country

Cook's Country is an American half-hour television cooking show on the PBS channel. It is shot in a renovated 1806 farmhouse located in Rupert, Vermont. The show is based on Cook's Country magazine (published by the same company as Cook's Illustrated) and a cover of it appears at the start of each episode.

Cast and content

Cook's Country is structured similarly to America's Test Kitchen, with nearly the same cast. Christopher Kimball, Bridget Lancaster and Julia Collin-Davison are primarily featured, with Erin McMurrer making occasional appearances beginning in Season 2. As in America's Test Kitchen, Jack Bishop is in charge of the Tasting Lab, while Adam Ried features new products in the Equipment Corner.

While Cook's Country follows an identical show format, there are notable differences between the two. Cook's Country features recipes that are more rustic and commonly thought of as "comfort food". There is emphasis on recipes from different sections of America, specifically from the South and Southwestern cultures. Christopher Kimball also begins each segment with a historical perspective on each recipe prior to the demonstration.

Thomas Cook Group

Thomas Cook Group plc is a British global travel company listed on the London Stock Exchange. It was formed on 19 June 2007 by the merger of Thomas Cook AG, itself the successor to Thomas Cook & Son, and MyTravel Group plc. It is a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index.

At the time of the merger, 52% of the shares in the new company were held by the German mail-order and department store company Arcandor (the former owner of Thomas Cook AG) and 48% owned by the shareholders of MyTravel Group. Arcandor filed for bankruptcy in June 2009, and its shares in Thomas Cook were sold in September 2009.

The group owns a number of tour operators, as well as charter airlines based in the United Kingdom, Belgium and Scandinavia. Thomas Cook also owns the scheduled airline Condor and booking website Hotels4u.

History

Formation

In February 2007, it was announced that the Thomas Cook AG and MyTravel Group plc were to merge. The companies announced they expected to make savings of over £75 million a year, following the integration of both businesses. Under the terms of the merger, the owners of Thomas Cook AG, KarstadtQuelle (later Arcandor), owned 52% of the new group. The shareholders of MyTravel Group owned the remaining 48% share. The merger was completed in June 2007, and took place through the formation of 'NewCo' which effectively purchased MyTravel and Thomas Cook and was then listed on the London Stock Exchange under the name of Thomas Cook Group plc.

Country

A country is a region that is identified as a distinct entity in political geography. A country may be an independent sovereign state or one that is occupied by another state, as a non-sovereign or formerly sovereign political division, or a geographic region associated with sets of previously independent or differently associated people with distinct political characteristics. Regardless of the physical geography, in the modern internationally accepted legal definition as defined by the League of Nations in 1937 and reaffirmed by the United Nations in 1945, a resident of a country is subject to the independent exercise of legal jurisdiction.

Sometimes the word countries is used to refer both to sovereign states and to other political entities, while other times it refers only to states. For example, the CIA World Factbook uses the word in its "Country name" field to refer to "a wide variety of dependencies, areas of special sovereignty, uninhabited islands, and other entities in addition to the traditional countries or independent states".^{[Note 1]}