Vivian Howard has a new cookbook and a plan for a safe book-signing selfie
Chef and author Vivian Howard has found a way to socially distance the book-signing-selfie.
As Howard promotes the release of her second cookbook, “This Will Make it Taste Good,” she is holding a series of ticketed in-person, outdoor book signings, including a Triangle stop Oct. 24 at Raleigh’s North Hills in the JC Penney parking lot.
Due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, fans will be asked to wear masks and stay in their cars, working their way to Howard, who will sign books and pose for pictures.
The Raleigh event, hosted by Quail Ridge Books, is 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., but remaining tickets are in the 2 p.m. hour. The $60 includes a signed copy of Howard’s new book, a pack of snacks prepared from the book and a brief meet and greet.
“This Will Make it Taste Good” hit bookshelves Oct. 20 as the sophomore follow-up to Howard’s award-winning “Deep Run Roots,” which was named the 2017 International Association of Culinary Professionals cookbook of the year.
Howard is best known for her award-winning PBS series “A Chef’s Life,” which chronicled the lives of her family as they ran Chef & the Farmer, including the recovery from the kitchen fire, as well as highlighted traditional Eastern North Carolina ingredients. Her new PBS show, “Somewhere South,” debuted this spring.
Howard called her debut book a love letter to Eastern North Carolina, to the rural region east of Interstate 95 where she grew up and opened her first restaurant, Kinston’s Chef & the Farmer. The book is filled with traditional North Carolina dishes, like collard kraut, cornpone and fish stew. In the pages of her new work, Howard calls it “as much a historical document as a cookbook.”
The new “This Will Make it Taste Good” is more reflective of how Howard eats these days, she writes, using 10 flavorful staples, like a bright and briney salad dressing or caramelized onions, as that little something special that takes a recipe to the next level. Howard calls those staples “Heroes.” She says the recipes aren’t complicated and use ingredients that are easy to find or have on hand.
“And because food is the language I use to talk about my life, that’s what these recipes do, next to stories that offer a glimpse at the people, challenges, and lessons learned that stock the pantry of my life,” she writes on her website.
Beyond the new book, Howard opened the new bake shop, Handy & Hot in Charleston, S.C., earlier this year and plans to open the new restaurant Lenoir there later this year.
There are two other in-person book events, one in Charleston on Sunday, Oct. 25, and later in Richmond, Va., on Saturday, Nov. 7, as part of that city’s virtual food festival Fire, Flour & Fork. Additional book events are expected to be added.
For more information, visit vivianhoward.com/thiswillmakeittastegood.
This story was originally published October 23, 2020 at 4:44 PM with the headline "Vivian Howard has a new cookbook and a plan for a safe book-signing selfie."
