Victuals: An Appalachian Journey, with Recipes

by Ronni Lundy, Johnny Autry (Photographer)

Overview

“Both blunt and exquisite . . . O’Connor’s excellent debut . . .  is an example of precisely observed writing that makes a character’s specific existence glimmer with verisimilitude.”
—New York Times Book Review

"Spare and bracing...O'Connor constructs her setting with precise, atmospheric detail that captures a world slowly being eroded....It all makes for a haunting and lucid exploration of the moments leading up to immense change."
—NPR

“In Whale Fall, the landscape and its people speak together…By rejecting nostalgia but still foregrounding landscape, Whale Fall makes space for the more intimate, surreal ways that culture can relate to nature.”
—The Nation

"Whale Fall is an astonishingly assured debut that straddles many polarities: love and loss, the familiar and the strange, trust and betrayal, land and sea, life and death. O’Connor has created a beguiling and beguiled narrator in Manod: I loved seeing the world through her eyes, and I didn’t want the novel to end"
—Maggie O'Farrell, New York Times bestselling author of The Marriage Portrait and Hamnet

"A haunting, unhurried, unusual debut...O’Connor offers a clear-eyed exploration of our tendency to fetishize the rural, the isolated, and what it means to become an object of study."
—Joanna Quinn, New York Times bestselling author of The Whalebone Theater

"Whale Fall is a powerful novel, written with a calm, luminous precision, each feeling rendered with chiseled care, the drama of island life unfolding with piercing emotional accuracy"
—Colm Toibin, New York Times bestselling author of Brooklyn and The Magician

"O’Connor’s slim, powerful debut vibrates with elemental, immediate, and palpable scenes and descriptions...O’Connor’s spare, incisive prose brings the island to vivid life."
—Boston Globe

"These minimalist pages shimmer...What a testament to the capaciousness, generosity and emotional range of true art."
—Scientific American

"I absolutely adored Whale Fall. I fell completely under its spell: the quiet beauty of it, the mounting sense of loss, the subtle way that Elizabeth O'Connor handled the exploitation, betrayal and desecration of a small community. Every sentence rang with clarity and authenticity. It's a triumph."
—Elizabeth Macneal, author of The Doll Factory and Circus of Wonders

“Beautiful and restrained, Whale Fall moves like a tide, ebbing and flowing. A novel that matches the simplicity and timelessness of the classics of island literature, reminiscent of Tomás O’Crohan or Robin Flower, it is transporting and utterly beautiful.”
—Seán Hewitt, author of All Down Darkness Wide

"The quiet cadences of Whale Fall contain a deep melody of loss held and let go. It is a gentle, tough story about profound change."
—Anne Enright, Booker Prizewinning author of The Gathering

"Mesmerizing...Whale Fall is a rich and quietly compelling novel that vividly captures the community’s transformation. Entrancing descriptions illuminate the raw beauty of the island through seasonal changes. 
—Bookpage

“O’Connor manages to extract the fullest level of excitement, introspection and drama out of each detail of her perfectly crafted work…Manod’s adventures and musings take place in a perfectly rendered island, a castaway in her own hometown. If you love seafaring, island living and off-kilter ways of surviving, Whale Fall will not let you fetishize the place or the people. It’s too good of a book for that. Hidden in a historical setting, it gives the reader a heady mix of philosophy, coming of age, relationships, toxic masculinity and gossip while holding true to its hauntingly slow and suspenseful building of those details into a beautiful, bold cautionary tale. As a debut novelist, O’Connor must be celebrated for completely overhauling the elements she uses in her storytelling, which we have seen from the likes of Isabel Allende, Edith Wharton and Toni Morrison. The way that she uses the characters’ differences to bind them to each other is nothing less than heroic. Whale Fall is a wonderful novel to be savored for all of its beauty.”
—Bookreporter

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780804186759
Publisher:	Clarkson Potter/Ten Speed
Publication date:	08/30/2016
Sold by:	Random House
Format:	eBook
Pages:	320
Sales rank:	884,287
File size:	183 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Born in Corbin, Kentucky, RONNI LUNDY has long chronicled the people of the hillbilly diaspora as a journalist and cookbook author. She is the former restaurant reviewer and music critic for The Courier-Journal in Louisville, former editor of Louisville Magazine, and has contributed to many national magazines. Her book Shuck Beans, Stack Cakes and Honest Fried Chicken was recognized by Gourmet magazine as one of six essential books on Southern cooking. In 2009, Lundy received the Southern Foodways Alliance Craig Claiborne Lifetime Achievement Award. She has contributed to Eating Well,Gourmet, Bon Appétit, Esquire, and other magazines.

Table of Contents

Introduction 16

Roots and Seeds 25

Messing with Greens 54

Salt of the Earth 69

Salty Dogs: Chili Buns and Slaw Dogs 98

Corn 103

David Bauer 130

Beans 137

The Third Sister 166

Apple-achia 173

The Art of Apple Butter 186

Travis's Tattoos 197

Preserving 201

A Sweet Squeeze 230

Husbandry 245

Shelly Cooper 278

Appalachian Spring 285

Acknowledgments 315

Index 316

Editorial Reviews

★ 07/04/2016
Lundy (The Festive Table), a founder of the Southern Foodways Alliance and the Appalachian Food Summit, clearly has a deep understanding and appreciation for Southern cooking. Defining Appalachia as an area encompassing Kentucky, the Virginias, Tennessee, southern Ohio, North Carolina, southern Ohio, and northern Georgia, she provides is an elegantly photographed and lovingly narrated appreciation of Appalachian cuisine and the people who grow and prepare it. Drawing from family recipes, her own creations, and dishes from vintage cookbooks, Lundy takes the reader on a virtual tour of the area, stopping to explain the difference between salad and sallet (a specific way of cooking greens), touring regional museums, and talking shop with a handful of small, local producers. She introduces readers to simple dishes such as buttermilk cucumber salad, skillet corn, icebox green strawberry pickles, and roasted candy roaster squash, a regional favorite. Though she has a tendency to meander a bit (the instructions for skillet-fried chicken and milk gravy take up a page and a half), Lundy is a warm and charming guide with a deep-seated love and respect for the region and its approach to cuisine. Fans of locally sourced foods and Southern cooking will find a lot to like here, as Lundy does a terrific job of showcasing Appalachia’s breadth and depth. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

Victuals promises to be the jewel in [Ronni Lundy’s] crown, setting the record straight about her native cuisine, too long dismissed as homogenized, and telling instead the real story of a cookery thrillingly formed at the crossings of African, European, and Native Nation traditions. Did we mention it comes with recipes?”—Oxford American

"Each chapter of Victuals focuses on a tentpole of Appalachian cuisine; an ingredient or a tradition. Essays on each, along with 80 recipes, tell the story of this diverse mountain cuisine through the words of one of its biggest champions." — Epicurious

”Lundy is a warm and charming guide with a deep-seated love and respect for the region and its approach to cuisine. Fans of locally sourced foods and Southern cooking will find a lot to like here, as Lundy does a terrific job of showcasing Appalachia’s breadth and depth.” —Publishers Weekly 

“Perhaps the finest book ever about mountain food.” —The Bitter Southerner 

"Long after the plates are cleaned and the dishes washed, I’ll return to this book for the stories. Lundy on Appalachia is like Edna Lewis on Virginia... Her voice brims with grace and good humor. She is a marvel, and “Victuals” her masterpiece." —Wendell Brock, Atlanta Journal-Constitution 

"A loving portrait of Appalachian food, past and future"— Epicurious

"The recipes in Victuals are appealing enough to have begun making their way into my repertoire — an August experiment with her dead-simple recipe for cornbread led to my eating a whole pan of it within 24 hours.  But it's the nuanced glimpse the book offers of Appalachia, both poor and rich, supportive and combative, that I imagine will stick with me." —National Geographic 

In her new book Victuals: An Applachian Journey, with Recipes — you may pronounce it "vittles" — the Asheville-based author tells the story of a region.  Her region.  The one she explored growing up and as an itinerant chronicler of Appalachian culture." —USA Today

"Four thousand miles Lundy drove for her new book, gathering tales, recipes and anecdotes. It's a journey that comes alive in color far more vivid than those images you'll often see, the kind that paint Appalachia as a backwater monoculture." —USA Today

"To call it a cookbook seems almost unfair. This is not just a collection of recipes or, as so many cookbooks these days are, a "branding opportunity" for an aspiring chef.  In Victuals — which the book's cover makes clear is pronounced "viddles" — Lundy has written a love letter to the foods, culture, and fortitude of Appalachian people." —Washington Post

"Part reminiscence, part living history, Victuals (right on the book cover, Lundy stresses that the word is pronounced “vi-dls”) would be an important study of southern Appalachia even without the 80 recipes that illustrate the region’s culinary diversity." —Chicago Tribune

"Victuals is a breathtaking work of literature that sneaks up on you, casts a spell, and corrects your misconceptions; it’s a cookbook less about cook and more book."—The A.V. Club


 

From the Publisher