Kelsey Nixon chops a red pepper into slices and adds the pieces to the salad on her countertop. She rolls a lime on her cutting board — “you get the most juice this way,” she says — and squeezes the liquid into her homemade salad dressing.

“This is excellent because it’s so fast and easy to make,” the 22-year-old says, a big grin spreading across her face.

Judging by her calm, easy demeanor, you’d think Nixon was in her kitchen at home, satisfying a craving for a healthy snack. But when she looks up from slicing a small roma tomato, the diminutive 5-foot, 1-inch tall college senior stares into a camera that will transmit her tasty salad recipe to all of Provo via her cable show, “Kelsey’s Kitchen.”

The show, filmed in a small, one-room studio, is carried on iProvo’s Channel 1 at various times during the week. “Kelsey’s Kitchen” typically runs for a half-hour, just enough time to demonstrate how to make three to four recipes.

Nixon works hard to provide specific, step-by-step explanations for her masterpieces — something she says most cooking shows lack — and she often brings on guests to help her prepare her vittles.

Nixon, a Brigham Young University senior majoring in broadcast journalism, has never been afraid to be in front of the camera. Her sunny smile and peppy personality have won hearts everywhere from “The Martha Stewart Show” and “Everyday Food” TV shows in New York to the North Ogden Little Miss Cherry Days pageant, where she was crowned queen at 8 years old.

“There’s a lot of personality in there,” said her dad, Dan Nixon, a real estate developer in Ogden. “She exudes energy wherever she goes.”

Nixon got her first taste of performing when she began dancing as a child.

Another pastime Nixon fell in love with was cooking. She made meals by her mother’s side and indulged in her grandmother’s “excellent” cooking.

When Nixon began college, she decided to combine her love of cooking with her desire to be a broadcast journalist.

“I love sharing something I’m passionate about, something I enjoy so much,” Nixon said. “Here (at BYU) I have wonderful mentors to help me pursue my dreams in this broadcast niche.”

Part of Nixon’s success is her determination, said Dale Cressman, a BYU communications professor and one of Nixon’s mentors.

“We’ve guided her, but this has all come from her,” he said. “She’d ask, ‘Can I do thisfi’ and it was always all Kelsey’s idea.”

When she wasn’t attending school, Nixon snatched up as many internship and learning experiences as she could, often spending summers away from home to perfect her craft. She studied at the French Culinary Institute in New York City, a three-month program that taught the basics of cooking, including knife skills and recipe development. She said this is partly where she developed a taste for fine food, and her recipes soon began to include crème brulee and veal.

She then returned to Utah and won an internship at “Good Things Utah,” a morning talk show on ABC Channel 4. Though she worked backstage, helping to arrange the set for the show, Nixon said she will never forget how something she did made the show on her last day of work.

The morning she was to leave, Nixon decided to make fruit pizza for the stars and crew of the show, cooking the food in the ovens featured on camera. Unfortunately, the segment ran long that day and as the hosts were talking, black smoke started pouring out of the ovens. The hosts made a joke of it and Nixon laughs about it even now, saying it was just like her to leave such a lasting impression.

Besides burnt fruit pizza, Nixon also left the show with ideas about cooking programs forming in her head.

“At ‘Good Things Utah,’ I really started thinking about working in the (food) industry,” she said. “It was the first place I got the idea of working with food on TV.”

Next, Nixon crossed the country to work with Martha Stewart in New York City, interning for “Everyday Food” and “The Martha Stewart Show.”

It was with Martha where Nixon learned to be something of a perfectionist when it came to food on television.

“Our motto was ‘Plan for the worst, hope for the best,’ ” Nixon said. “No one who works for Martha ever makes mistakes because they fix problems before they have them.”

Nixon said she learned this the hard way when she was asked to prepare a pile of strawberries for a segment of the show. Simple enough, she thought — until she was asked to make “a perfect pile, a perfect, perfect pile and a perfect, perfect, perfect pile.” It was experiences like this, Nixon said, from which she adopted the adage, “If you’re going to do something, do it well.”

She also worked on the East Coast for “Semi-Homemade Cooking,” a show on the Food Network.

With a wealth of experience under her belt, Nixon decided to try something local based on her knowledge. She pitched the idea for what became “Kelsey’s Kitchen” to Provo Cable in the spring of 2005, and executives gave her the green light.

Nixon shot five pilot episodes with volunteer students and Provo Cable picked it up, building her a set to make her recipes on. She now films 15- and 30-minute segments of her “fast, fun and affordable” recipes, as is her catchphrase, and constantly looks for ways to make difficult recipes easier or cheaper for students to make.

Nixon was excited when the project took off, as she knew she had something special.

“In this market, you’ve got to be unique,” she said. “I’m younger, but I can teach the absolute basics to college students, so I’m capitalizing on that.”

Nixon doesn’t just come up with recipes and present them on the air. Each show takes a massive amount of work, she says. She makes the recipes three to four times to test for taste, and she usually stays up the night before shooting to really understand what she’s cooking with. For example, she wants to know why to use semisweet instead of milk chocolate and if buying the more expensive ingredients makes a difference.

“I feel like if people are taking the time to watch, they should really learn something,” Nixon said. “Besides, I’m learning, too — what does a 22-year-old know about cookingfi”

One of the hardest parts of doing “Kelsey’s Kitchen,” Nixon said, is the filming itself. She typically shoots four to five episodes at a time in a five- to six-hour stint in a building behind the Provo Power stacks, and the work is a nightmare for her feet. The cook, who stands just above 5 feet “on a good day,” either wears heels or stands on a box so she doesn’t “look like a little child,” as she says. By the end of the day, she strains to smile through the pain.

Another challenge with the show is her lack of resources: Though the kitchen may look fully equipped to viewers, the faucet doesn’t work and there is no refrigerator to store her materials. When she uses a bowl, she can’t wash it, so she has to be prepared and bring two.

“I walk in with three huge laundry baskets full of food, and I leave with three laundry baskets full of dirty dishes,” she said.

Despite the struggles, Nixon said she enjoys doing the show for a local station.

“It’s nice to work on a local level,” she said. “I can experiment because it’s so small.”

The show has also given Nixon the opportunity to write a cookbook, which she hopes to have finished soon and published through Cedar Fort Publishing.

Nixon, who is slated to graduate from BYU in April 2007, said she isn’t sure what will happen with “Kelsey’s Kitchen,” but she’s certainly enjoying the ride. Following graduation, she plans to attend a professional culinary school, preferably in San Francisco, where she can gain expertise in her field. Following her education, Nixon hopes to land her own national show and put her skills to use with her own family. She is definitely prepared, say friends.

“Kelsey’s special because when you usually meet someone with so much drive and ambition, there’s some harshness about them,” said Noelle Nicolai, 22, who has been a close friend of Nixon’s for two years. “But she embodies being ambitious and driven while being welcoming and warm.”

Nixon dreams of one day owning a bed and breakfast in Italy, making breakfast for her customers. As she says, no matter where you go, everyone understands food.

In the end, Nixon said, all she wants is to find joy in her passions.

“I want to be happy and make the people around me happy,” she said with a big smile. “I want to teach things that ignite passions within people. That makes me happy.”

This story appeared in The Daily Herald on page B1.

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