Vivian Howard

Vivian visits Broad Slab Distillery, where they talk about the art and soul of white lightning. The restaurant's mixologist works moonshine into several new drinks, while the restaurant staff struggles through the holiday party season. They end the season with a party of their own at Ben and Vivian's new house, with AppleJack Moonshine cocktails making a guest appearance.

Vivian visits neighbor Marty Harper's peanut farm just before and during harvest. Vivian's dad introduces Ben and Vivian to the old school break snack, a pack of salted peanuts dumped into a Pepsi in a glass bottle. At the restaurant, Vivian translates the snack into Pepsi glazed pork belly with country ham braised peanuts. Vivian reinvents the popular Southern snack, boiled peanuts, for the local farmers' market.

Vivian and Ben rebuild their restaurant against the backdrop of the Southern harbinger of spring, the strawberry. Their twins go on their first strawberry-picking excursion, and Vivian and a friend develop a recipe for coconut cornbread strawberry shortcake with basil whipped cream.

Vivian and Ben go to Maple View Dairy to pick up product for the restaurant. They talk buttermilk with the dairy's manager, and the noise Ben makes while savoring his cup of the thick liquid annoys his wife. The couple attempts to shoot the twins' Christmas card picture in the family's swimming-pool-turned-turnip patch, while Vivian's nieces and nephews desperately try to make buttermilk with their great-grandmother's butter churn.

With her signature flair, Chef Vivian Howard invites us to her own holiday table in this one-hour special, featuring the best of her own Southern cooking heritage with Ben's Chanukah celebration added to the mix. A CHEF'S LIFE HOLIDAY SPECIAL invites viewers to join in on a charming and delicious journey through one of our most beloved seasons.

Chef Vivian and her husband, Ben, leave New York to open a restaurant in her small North Carolina hometown. Vivian revisits the Southern tradition of "putting up" corn and shares her method for making smoked corn relish. As the episode concludes, a devastating setback threatens their new life.

Vivian travels to Columbia, South Carolina, to meet with Glenn Roberts of Anson Mills and learns about Carolina heirloom rice growing in fields on the Savannah River. Glenn explains Anson Mills' efforts to save heirloom grains and discusses the importance of ingredient biodiversity. Glenn's passion inspires Vivian to host a "rice dinner" at Chef and the Farmer, where each course centers around this grain. Scarlett, Vivian's mom, schools her daughter...

Vivian Howard, the star cocreator of PBS's A CHEF'S LIFE, celebrates the flavors of North Carolina's coastal plain in more than 200 recipes and stories.

Premiering on PBS, Vivian travels the changing South in search of the dishes that connect all, dumplings, hand pies, porridge and more, but which are expressed in delightfully different ways across cultures. Along the way, she meets new friends and teachers, and as she says, she discovers how breaking bread and sharing a meal can create a comfortable place to have meaningful, memorable conversations.

Season two hits the road with a new roster of Southern ingredients. Vivian and Ben open a second restaurant, plant heirloom apple trees, go pier fishing, hunt ramps and pick up pecans. We'll tag along as Vivian prepares something special for 400 food writers and chefs down in the Delta, fixes holiday meals to meet her family's high standards, and returns to New York City to cook the meal of her career at the James Beard House.