Rifts in TV family affect reality show

Q: On TLC there is a program called “Little People, Big World.” It’s a reality series that follows the Roloff family, which is headed by a man and wife who are little people parenting a daughter and three sons. The youngest son would be about 21 but has not been on the program for many months. He has missed weddings, graduations, vacations, birthdays, but no mention is ever made of him. Where did he go?

A: Several gigantic rifts apparently have developed in this popular TV family in which the parents and one of their twin sons were born with dwarfism.

According to reviews I read, you were like hundreds of thousands of the show’s fans who became enamored with Jacob almost as soon as the show premiered on March 4, 2006. Just 9 years old at the time, Jacob was seen as sweet and adorable. They watched with particular interest (and prayers) after he and a friend suffered a serious head injury in October 2006 when the family’s trebuchet (which the Roloffs used to launch pumpkins) triggered prematurely and pushed a small piece of skull into his brain. Fortunately, doctors released the swelling in his head and Jacob was released from the hospital two days later.

After spending so much of his childhood in front of cameras, that sweetness wore off. In season nine, which followed the marriage of Jeremy to Audrey that drew 2.3 million viewers, Jacob began limiting his appearances saying he not only hated being filmed all those years but tweeted that he wasn’t receiving money from the TV show that should be coming his way.

The family reportedly mended fences temporarily, but Jacob, now 19, struck the final blow this year by cutting all ties with the show before its 10th season, saying he is an agnostic and does not share his family’s fervent Christianity. (Jeremy and Audrey recently reposted a tweet claiming the “American left” is working to close all churches that do not support its homosexual agenda.)

“I defended myself ‘being a Christian’ until I realized I’ve never done anything to call myself one besides be born into a Christian family,” he tweeted.

As a parting shot, Jacob recently accused the show’s producers of feeding the family lines and scripting entire scenes. For more on this feud, search for “Roloff scripted” on Google.

Q: “A Chef’s Life with Vivian Howard” has not been on KETC-TV Channel 9 for a while. Will that series return? Is her cookbook out?

A: Get ready for both a video and literary feast when Vivian Howard returns for season No. 4 of “A Chef’s Life” as she prepares for the release of her much-anticipated first cookbook.

“It’s an extremely popular show and one of my favorites,” KETC spokeswoman Kay Porter told me. So you can bet Porter will be parked in front of her TV when Howard reopens the doors to her Chef & The Farmer restaurant in Kinston, N.C., on Sept. 19. The show will air at 1 p.m. Mondays with repeats at noon on Saturdays on KETC.

For those who haven’t yet pulled up a chair to her culinary smorgasbord, “A Chef’s Life” is a Peabody- and Emmy-award winning docu-series that has been welcoming viewers into the kitchen of a high-end restaurant in the low country of eastern North Carolina since September 2013. It follows the triumphs and travails of head chef Howard, her husband, Ben Knight, and their farm-to-table restaurant, exploring both traditional and modern applications of quintessential Southern cuisine.

Howard, 38, is a native of nearby Deep Run, N.C., where her parents raised hogs and grew tobacco, cotton and corn. During her years at North Carolina State University, Howard spent a semester in Argentina as part of a culinary-themed program. After graduating, she took a job with a New York ad agency before quitting 18 months later to become a waitress at the trendy (but now-closed) Voyage restaurant, where she was taken under the head chef’s wing.

After Howard married Knight, a restaurant coworker, the two started a soup-delivery business out of their Harlem apartment. But spurning offers from investors to open their own brick-and-mortar eatery in New York, the two accepted her parents’ offer to buy a restaurant in Kinston and opened Chef & The Farmer in 2006 in a former mule stable. They say more than 60 percent of the ingredients they use comes from within a 90-mile radius. They also love being able to cultivate the area’s rich culinary heritage as well.

“One of the things I like about ‘A Chef’s Life’ and dislike about modern media, in general, is that (our culture is) very young-person-new-ideas driven, and I don’t think people call on the wisdom of older folks very much,” she once told Southern Living magazine. “To learn from them and share has been wonderful.”

Fearing those traditions might eventually be lost, Howard contacted filmmaker Cynthia Hill, and together they filmed a pilot show that PBS quickly picked up. Now Howard and Knight have a huge hit on their hands as they enjoy life on Howard’s childhood homestead with their own twin children, Theo and Flo.

They are preparing to add to their successful recipe with the release of “Deep Run Roots: Stories and Recipes from My Corner of the South” on Oct. 4. In it, she will celebrate the flavors of North Carolina’s coastal plain with more than 200 recipes and stories. In the meantime, the first episode of the year will focus on spring onions as she prepares dinner for beginning farmers. Then, on Sept. 26, she will employ an “avid home cook” to put recipes from the new cookbook to the test.

If your taste buds can’t wait, you can preorder the book now at Amazon for $27.46 or $16.99 for the Kindle edition. To see what Howard is cooking up in the future, be sure to keep checking the menu at www.achefslifeseries.com.

Today’s trivia

What color are bluebirds?

Answer to Wednesday’s trivia: Scientists in South Africa recently announced the discovery of the oldest known cancer — a case of osteosarcoma in the toe bone of a human relative who died between 1.6 million and 1.8 million years ago. “You can opt for the paleo diet, you can have as clean a living environment as you want, but the capacity for these diseases is ancient and it’s within us regardless of what you do,” said study co-author Edward Odes, of the University of Witwatersrand.

This story was originally published August 4, 2016 at 9:00 AM with the headline "Rifts in TV family affect reality show."