Panhandle PBS Series offers food, education; Dinner series and video content highlight local growers, chefs

By Carly Stewart, Staff Reporter |

Panhandle PBS is cooking up television programs and online content highlighting growers and cooks from the Texas Panhandle. The video content will feature visits to area food producers and scenes from a series of fundraising dinners held this fall.

These dinners, called Savor the Goods, benefit Panhandle PBS and help to support more events and opportunities for the community, Kevin Ball, CEO of PPBS, said. Each one of the dinners is held at a different venue and each features a local chef who presents specialties sourced in the Texas Panhandle. The chefs have included Sam Blackburn, Rory Schepisi, Rocky Dunnam and Jessica Higgins. In addition to having the opportunity to enjoy unique food and drinks, guests are treated to cooking demonstrations.

“We like to be creative and have people have a nice time out while teaching them something new about our area. It is a great community investment,” Ball said, adding that the series was started because Panhandle PBS’s mission is to tell the stories of the people in the area and to have as much local content as possible.

“There are few other media organizations that tell in-depth stories like Panhandle PBS does,” Ball said.

Footage is recorded at all the dinners, which are running monthly through November. PPBS videographers captured additional video content of growers and chefs, which will help tell the stories of the farming communities in the Panhandle and the chefs who prepare homegrown food. This video series will be called “The Goods.” It will be part of Panhandle PBS’s Thursday night lineup next fall and parts will be shared through the station’s social media outlets and online.

“It turned into more than we could ever dream,” Corby Fails, PPBS development coordinator, said. “The people we’ve reached, the community of growers and farmers, the education…. it has elevated that scene across the board.”

“People didn’t know how to access healthy homegrown produce and food in our area. With the farm-to-table movement across America, it was the right timing,” she said.

The Savor the Goods dining events include chef-designed menus, thematic place settings and decor. The dinners began this summer and ran monthly through November. Video captured at the events will be featured online and on television next fall.

Photos provided by Panhandle PBS