Victuals

Victuals explores the foodways of the Appalachian region of the United States, documenting recipes, stories, and traditions from mountain communities across states like Kentucky, West Virginia, Tennessee, and North Carolina. Lundy weaves together personal narratives with historical context about how Appalachian food culture developed through Native American, African American, Scots-Irish, and other influences.

Victuals was published in 2016 by Clarkson Potter. It received widespread critical acclaim and won multiple awards, including a James Beard Foundation Book Award.

The recipes include traditional Appalachian dishes such as soup beans, cornbread, fried chicken, pickled beets, and stack cake. Many emphasize preservation techniques like fermenting and canning, as well as the use of foraged ingredients and heirloom vegetables specific to the mountain South.

Ronni Lundy is a Kentucky-born food writer who has chronicled Southern and Appalachian food culture for decades. She was a founder of the Southern Foodways Alliance and has written several cookbooks, though Victuals is considered her most comprehensive and personal work.

Yes, Victuals won the James Beard Foundation Book Award for American Cooking in 2017 and was named one of the best cookbooks of the year by numerous publications. The book was praised for both its rigorous research and its deeply personal storytelling about Appalachian communities.