Evolving Appalachia

By: The Local Palate

Copy to clipboard

Ronni Lundy is a Voice of the People

Author and food luminary Ronni Lundy drove more than 4,000 miles across the mountains of southern Appalachia in her “reliable but rough-countenanced Chevy Astro van” to seek out the voices and stories of her people. For her latest book Victuals (pronounced vidls), Lundy traversed Kentucky, West Virginia, southern Ohio, northern Georgia, Tennessee, Virginia, and North Carolina. In the book, she connects the dots from past to present with stories, recipes, and stunning imagery shot by photographer Johnny Autry.

The infamous Astro van aside, Lundy’s true vehicle is food, the great connector that brings people to the table and solidifies memory with the snap of a bean. Lundy draws on her own Appalachian experience growing up in Kentucky and captures the traditions of her culture, from pickling to “putting up,” while connecting readers to the voices of today’s Appalachia. Lundy’s book illustrates the richness of a region, and sends a resounding message– that her people are alive and well, and they are moving Appalachian cuisine forward with tradition as its North Star. The Local Palate spoke with Lundy about her travels since the release of Victuals last October, her continued illuminations about mountain culture, and the evolution of Appalachian cuisine.

The Local Palate (TLP): You’ve been on the road for the last several months on tour for Victuals. Any discoveries about the book and its content that have surprised you?

Ronni Lundy (RL): It’s been amazing to me that people are not just seeing this book as a cookbook, that they’re understanding it as a cultural history and a portrait of a region through its food. It’s a much more diverse culture, and not just about Anglo-Saxon bloodlines and Native Americans, but much richer and more complicated. People also understand that I’m talking about the present day. I am not talking about some history that is romantic and lost.

TLP: Though Victuals was published in 2016, this book has been in the works for quite some time as you’ve watched Appalachia evolve over years. What did you see happening?

RL: In 2008, I thought I saw what was getting ready to happen. It was clearly happening in Asheville, but it was very easy to say that Asheville is an anomaly. I thought, isn’t it possible that the contemporary versions of the sustainable food movement and the fact that Appalachia never stopped having small farms and sustainable practices is something special, and can’t that flower? That was the first of the first book proposals, and I kept revising it as I was finding more things.

TLP: Aside from signings, you’ve been the recipient of exquisite meals prepared by a host of chefs who have taken the recipes in Victuals and interpreted them in their own way. What was that like?

RL: Mike Costello and Amy Dawson of Lost Creek Farm did one of the meals. It was beautiful. It was like a little lesson on the plate, and each part of it had a story about the foodways of the mountains, either something that was foraged or stored and put up. The night before that, The Shack’s Ian Boden did a meal based on his interpretations of Appalachian foods from the Shenandoah Valley. The two meals could not have been more different, but they were both equally fantastic and equally expressive of Appalachian food, past and present.

TLP: People are now reinterpreting these foodways and traditions of Appalachian culture. How do you see the past coming together in the present?

RL: That’s always a complicated proposition. That requires us to be open-minded about who we are becoming. In the case of Appalachian history, it also requires us to reexamine a lot of the mythology that we have been given, and be open about that. When the Washington Post printed Ian Boden’s recipe for banana pudding, he made a sweet, salty banana pudding. What makes it salty is a miso paste in the banana bread. Immediately, a woman wrote in and said something to effect of, “I thought this was going to be about Appalachia. Miso paste is not Appalachian.” But miso has been made in the Appalachian mountains for the last 30 years, and it’s like, when do we claim something? We have to be willing to accept that you can put miso in banana bread and still be working in the Appalachian vernacular. We change.

TLP: So, as you’ve explored Appalachia in deeper ways for Victuals, your perspective on what is considered Appalachian has also changed?

RL: I think there are two things I can say about the evolution of my perspective. When I wrote Shuck Beans, Stack Cake, and Honest Fried Chicken twenty-five years ago, I think I would have been more inclined to a more rigid stance. By the time I came to write Victuals, I was beginning to understand the broadness of the interpretation, with much more diversity. It is cornbread and pinto beans, but that’s not the only thing on the table. The idea of this monolithic standard, that everybody cooked the same thing, it’s just not true. We have our preferences, and it’s fun to argue about them. But to assume that because your family did this, all Appalachians did. Or because your family didn’t, no one in Appalachia did. It’s not only the point of the region, but part of the joy of being from there. It’s part of the richness of our history.

TLP: As Appalachian culture spreads into the mainstream and more people learn about it, how do we protect the culture?

RL: The truth is, we can’t protect it. But what we can do is nourish it, strengthen it, and support the good work that people are doing.

TLP: Is it safe to say that there aren’t any hard and fast rules for the interpretation of Appalachian cuisine?

RL: We should taste the hand of the cook. Maybe what we’re trying to do is taste history as it comes through the hand of the cook today. So there’s not a rule. Except don’t put sugar in the cornbread. That is a rule.