Philip Potempa Celebrates This Season’s Harvest in New “From the Farm Cooking Show”

Food Columnist and Cookbook author Philip Potempa will bring the Harvest Edition of his “From the Farm Cooking Show” to the Center for Visual and Performing Arts on Sunday, August 27th at 2:30 p.m. This new two-hour program features more than $1,000 in free prizes and new games and will include a bounty of produce from his family farm to be given away during the show. Potempa will recreate the charm and traditions of the family farm kitchen that he writes about in his popular “From the Farm” column.

Potempa will prepare a seven-course meal in a recreation of the farm kitchen, including a 1938 kitchen stove. The menu will feature seasonal recipes, inspired by the harvests that take place in gardens across Northwest Indiana each year. The menu includes cheddar and chive biscuits, cactus chili, Karl Malden’s stuffed cabbage, zucchini and tomato casserole, a BLT side salad and Dolly Parton’s dessert bars. The recipes, along with the personal stories that have been told to Phil by celebrities and neighbors alike throughout the years, are peppered in between the food preparation and shared with fun from the stage during the show. The stage cooking show brings to life his weekly newspaper columns and the stories and photos from his 2010 cookbook Further from the Farm: Family Recipes and Memories of a Lifetime.

His journalism career began in 1992 when he started writing for magazines and newspapers, including The South Bend Tribune. At The Times of Northwest Indiana, he connected with readers for a quarter of a century as a noted feature writer and daily entertainment newspaper columnist. In 2016, his From the Farm recipe column and other feature stories and entertainment columns began appearing in The Post-Tribune and the Chicago Tribune’s newspaper chain as well as at www.chicagotribune.com.

In his three published cookbooks, each page chronicles interviews, recipes and memories from his personal and professional experiences. Throughout the years Potempa has interviewed and swapped recipes and stories with Julia Child, Martha Stewart, President Jimmy Carter, Oprah Winfrey and other favorite luminaries. He is also an adjunct instructor in communications at both Valparaiso University and Purdue University Northwest and divides his time between his family’s farm in Northwest Indiana and his home in Chicago.

Tickets for the Farm Cooking Show are $25 and are available at Theatre at the Center’s Box Office at 1040 Ridge Road in Munster or by calling 219-839-3255 or at www.TheatreAtTheCenter.com.