Shuck Beans, Stack Cakes and Honest Fried Chicken: The Heart and Soul of Southern Country Kitchens, first published in 1990, continues to delight new audiences. Lauded as the first major cookbook to look seriously at the foodways of the southern Appalachians, Shuck Beans was chosen by Gourmet as one of six essential cookbooks about southern food. Julia Child smacked her lips over it on “Good Morning America,” and Emmylou Harris praised it on Entertainment Tonight!  Said one fan recently, ”It’s not what your imaginary FoodTV southern grandma would make, it’s what your great-grandma actually did make (and probably a little bit more).”

 

A finalist for the International Association of Culinary Professionals prestigious Julia Child Award, Butter Beans to Blackberries: Recipes from the Southern Garden, 1999, is a luscious romp through the fresh foods of the American South. “Obviously crazy about simply cooked fresh fruits and vegetables (Ronni Lundy) has a knack for passing that pleasure on to the reader,” said the Chicago Tribune. And the New York Times told its readers: “For workable Southern recipes, turn to Butter Beans to Blackberries, an impressively large collection of both traditional and new dishes.”

 

Cornbread Nation 3: Foods of the Mountain South: Edited by Ronni Lundy, this 2005 anthology of the best writing on southern foods from the Southern Foodways Alliance expands from the rarely explored territory of Appalachian culinary traditions to reach a fuller understanding of the region and its people. “How do you hold to assumptions of ignorance when you see a list with dozens of native greens, berries, barks, and seeds that were turned into food and/or medicine? Or believe in traits of clannishness and hostility when you hear the catechism of a Loaves and Fishes ethic that made friends and strangers alike welcome to mountain tables?” Lundy asks in the book’s introduction. Author and East Tennessee State University professor Fred Sauceman says, “This is not humdrum food writing. This, friends, is the real stuff.”

Other cookbooks by Ronni Lundy:

The Festive Table: Recipes and Stories for Creating Your Own Holiday Traditions, 1995

 In Praise of Tomatoes, 2004

The Woodford Reserve Cookbook, with Peggy Stevens, 2005