Vivian Howard, award winning chef and co-creator of PBS’ “A Chef’s Life,” wrote her first cookbook, “Deep Run Roots,” to share her hometown recipes and stories.
Now, she is touring the nation with her new cookbook and a food truck not just to sign and present her book and stories but also to let patrons taste her food.
She’ll be stopping at Neon Pig in Oxford Monday, sans food truck, to talk about stories and some of the foods in “Deep Run Roots.”
“I go to Oxford once a year to the Southern Foodways Alliance symposium, and I am friends with the owners of Neon Pig, so it just seemed like a good place [for the signing],” Howard said.
The cookbook includes 25 chapters, each about one specific ingredient. Howard said there are about five to 11 recipes in each chapter that show the traditional ways to use the ingredient. Then, she moves on to more modern recipes. Each chapter has a section called “Wisdom,” where Howard shares what she learned while working with the ingredient. The final part of each chapter is Howard’s personal stories of how the ingredients relate to her life.
Howard’s experience on television has allowed her to expand to this medium.
“I always wanted to be a writer or journalist of some kind. And when we started airing the show, publishers started approaching me, so I had the opportunity to write a book,” Howard said. “More than a cookbook, I wanted it to be like a storybook.”
Howard will be touring with “Deep Run Roots” throughout October and November. According to Howard, the limit of how many people can attend each signing is 200, but some signings have been oversold.
At most of the signing events, Howard pulls along a food truck to prepare her recipes for attendees. The food truck won’t make an appearance at the Neon Pig signing, but her food will still be served at the restaurant.
After this run of her tour through the South and Southeast with the food truck, Howard will extend her tour outside of the South.
Howard owns two restaurants in Kinston, North Carolina.
Howard’s Boiler Room is an oyster bar and burger restaurant based on her childhood, and Chef and the Farmer is a “progressive eatery” based off the region’s ingredients and traditions – much like Howard’s cookbook. In Howard’s biography of the restaurant, she said her hope in opening Chef and the Farmer would convince Eastern North Carolina tobacco farmers to become food farmers instead. Fittingly, like Howard’s need to share her hometown ingredients and recipes, Neon Pig also strives to include local farmers and businesses in the restaurant as a way to benefit the community.
Catch Howard at 5 p.m. on Monday. Tickets for the event are $50, including a copy of the cookbook and food at the event.
