From 2013 to 2018, Howard hosted the PBS television series A Chef's Life[1] focusing on the ingredients and cooking traditions of eastern North Carolina — using the backdrop of the Chef & the Farmer restaurant in Kinston, North Carolina, which Howard co-owned with her then-husband and business partner, artist Ben Knight.

In 2023, Howard wrote an opinion piece for the New York Times, outlining the foundational problems with the current restaurant business model, many that contributed directly to the post-pandemic temporary closure of The Chef and the Farmer — which she reopen in a re-envisioned format as a story-telling tasting menu seating.

[1] Her parents, John and Scarlett Howard, were farmers who raised hogs and grew tobacco, cotton, soybeans, wheat, and corn.

[5] At age 14, Howard attended Salem Academy, an all-girls boarding school in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where she was classmates with Adrian H. Wood.

[9] Howard and Knight moved to North Carolina in 2005 and opened Chef & the Farmer in 2006 in a downtown building, previously a print shop — and before that, a mule stable.

[10] The restaurant creates modern interpretations of traditional southern dishes, often collected from members of her family's Eastern North Carolina community.

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.

[16] Howard authored the cookbook and memoir Deep Run Roots - Stories and Recipes from my Corner of the South ISBN 0316381101, released in October 2016.

Howard and Knight opened a restaurant called Benny's Big Time Pizzeria on December 12, 2017, in Wilmington, NC's Warehouse District.

[22] In 2011, after being concerned that certain food traditions would be lost without documentation, Howard contacted her friend Cynthia Hill, a filmmaker from Eastern North Carolina.

[10] Howard in addition was nominated for James Beard Foundation Award for Television Program, On Location (2014, 2015, 2016), Visual and Technical Excellence (2015), Outstanding Personality Host (2015), and American Cooking: Deep Run Roots (2017).