Vivian Howard has chronicled her adventures as a farm-to-table restaurateur for three seasons of A Chef’s Life. Howard won the 2016 James Beard Foundation Award for Outstanding Television Personality; A Chef’s Life has also received a Daytime Emmy Award (2015) and a Peabody Award (2014). In the fourth season, Howard continues her culinary trek through ingredients, among them cabbage, catfish and peas. Onions and Avetts kicks off the season on NPT on Saturday, Oct. 8, at 10:30 a.m. and features a performance by the Avett Brothers, whose “Will You Return” plays during the show’s opening titles.
This season also includes scenes of Howard hard at work on Deep Run Roots, her first cookbook. NPT is giving away a copy of Deep Run Roots via the Nashville Scene’s Free Stuff and viewers will have the chance to meet Howard at Parnassus Books on Oct. 6.
To be fair, “cookbook” doesn’t quite define Deep Run Roots, which is really a food-themed memoir. As recounted in the TV series, Howard grew up waiting to flee her eastern North Carolina home and made her way to New York, where her “smoldering obsession” with food led to various restaurant jobs and the goal of becoming a food writer.
“I always wanted to be a storyteller, I never gave up on that,” Howard said. “This is the first attempt to continue to follow that dream.” Howard spoke by phone just a few days after taking part in the Music City Food + Wine Festival. Her idea was to make Deep Run Roots as much about the stories as the food. She didn’t feel restricted by any rules for writing a cookbook because she didn’t know them. The nearly 600-page book is a wonderful read, highlighting Howard’s deep connection to region, family and food. She is as forthright in print as she is in her series, revealing the insecurities she felt as a country kid trying to make her way in the big city and how she learned to accept her life on its own terms and in its own place.
Howard is also throwing out the rules when it comes to promoting the book. “I wanted to cook for people and talk to people in an informal, affordable setting,” she explained. She also liked the idea of traveling with her own kitchen to avoid the stresses of working in different spaces over the course of a tour.
On the menu for her food truck’s Nashville stop is Tom Thumb (that’s sausage-stuffed pig appendix, as viewers might recall); Shrimp Stew with Poached Eggs; Watermelon Pickles Wrapped in Bacon; Pimento Cheese Grits with Salsa; and her mother Scarlett’s Chicken and Rice. For dessert there’s Warm Banana Pudding; Pepsi and Peanut Ice Cream Floats and Pecan-Chewy Pie. As photographed in the book, the latter is topped with a scoop of chocolate ice cream melting enticingly over the side of a slice and onto the saucer.
The photographs in Deep Run Roots were shot by Rex Miller, the Emmy Award-winning director of photography on A Chef’s Life. Miller’s images are beautiful and compelling, while also convincingly realistic; they look as though they were taken at a comfortable dinner party for friends. Howard plans to bring a taste of that party to Nashville.
Season 4 of A Chef’s Life premieres 10:30 a.m. Saturday, Oct. 8, on NPT. Find our complete schedule at wnpt.org/schedule.