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Imagine opening an upscale eatery in a rural area where the paychecks and pal- ates are decidedly nonupscale. That's the challenge chef Vivian Howard and her husband, Benjamin Knight, under- took when they moved back from New York City to her hometown of Kinston, N.C., a decade ago and opened Chef & the Farmer, a fine-dining establishment that boasts farm-to-table Southern cuisine and entrees upward of $25. "When we opened, we thought that we were in the education business," explains Howard, whose day-to-day adventures are chronicled in the PBS Sunday documentary series "A Chef's Life," now in Season 2 (check local listings). "That we were going to share made-from-scratch food and beautiful presentation and balanced plates with an audience who had not been exposed to that sort of dining and they were suddenly going to want that. "And so we were clearly very naive," she continues, "because really what we were met with was suspicion, and we kind of felt like everybody wanted us to or at least believe that we would fail. And there was a lot of talk about how high our prices were and how small our portions were. And luckily a lot of talk like that does encourage people to come and give it a try once or twice. And by doing so, we were relatively busy for the first few years we were open, and then over time I think we won a lot of people over." Chef and the Farmer's success led to the opening of a second restaurant, the Boiler Room Oyster Bar, last year in Kinston. Howard is also bottling her locally popular blueberry barbecue sauce for chicken. And she's raising twins and shooting a TV show. "My mom says that's just the stage of life that I'm in," Howard says with a laugh. 'A Chef's Life' is clearly very busy Chef Vivian Howard •What are you currently reading? "I'm reading 'The Third Plate' by Dan Barber, and I'm about halfway through it and it's taken me several months to get there because generally I get in bed and I have one eye open at that point. But I think that the information and the message is really important in that book, and so I'm going to finish it." •What did you have for dinner last night? "Oddly enough, I had stewed beet greens with tomatoes over rice. And then I ate everything that was left on my kids' plates because that's what I always do." •What is your next project? "We have a small, kind of specialty store group in the South called Southern Sea- sons, and I'm developing a co-branded line of products with them ... . And many of the products will be based on fruits and using fruits in a savory fashion because that's something I love to do." BY GEORGE DICKIE BEST BASEBALL MOVIES "Field of Dreams" (1989) While not the most historically accurate of baseball films – c'mon, Shoeless Joe Jackson batted left-handed and threw righty, not the other way around as Ray Liotta portrayed him – this tale of an Iowa farmer (Kevin Costner) who built a baseball diamond in his cornfield at the urging of a disembodied voice never fails to bring a lump to the throat with the closing scene of Costner's character playing catch with his long-estranged (and deceased) father. "A League of Their Own" (1992) The little-known story of the World War II-era All-American Girls Professional Baseball League gets light-hearted but respectful treatment in Penny Marshall's superb comedy/drama. Outstanding performances come from all around, from Tom Hanks as a besotted, washed-up star player turned manager to Madonna as a randy ballplayer and Geena Davis as her team's star player and the film's central character. And the closing scenes at Doubleday Field in Cooperstown, N.Y. – set against the strains of Madonna's "This Used to Be My Playground" – give the film an added poignancy. "61*" (2001) Director Billy Crystal is a lifelong New York Yankees fan and that certainly showed in this excellent historical drama about Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris' race to break Babe Ruth's home run record in 1961. In addition to the attention to detail paid to Yankee minutiae (Yogi Berra's malapropisms, Phil Rizzuto's tendency to stray from the subject), the film also features the downright spooky resemblances of Thomas Jane and Barry Pepper to Mantle and Maris. And a few jabs at the New York media of the day didn't hurt either. "42" (2013) Dashing Indiana Jones as rumpled Brooklyn Dodgers executive Branch Rickey? Well, the artist known as Harrison Ford manages to pull it off in style in this outstanding drama about the challenges faced by Jackie Robinson in breaking baseball's color barrier in 1947. As the majors' first African-American player, Robinson had to be strong enough not to fight back against the slings and arrows of racism, a struggle Chadwick Bozeman portrays superbly – especially in one scene where an opposing manager repeatedly taunts Robinson with an inflammatory epithet. BY GEORGE DICKIE "Field of Dreams" "42" "A League of Their Own" 8 The Goshen News • TV Spotlight • October 20 - 26, 2014

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