Provisions: Finding Home Through the Food Folklore of the Appalachian Table

A sensory celebration of Appalachian culinary traditions, and a call to reclaim the lost rituals, recipes, and food folklore of the places you call home. Amanda Held Opelt’s childhood was shaped by the shared, multi-generational table that brought everyone at her Granny’s 100-acre farm to breakfast over buttered biscuits, fried brook trout, wild honey, and blackberry jam.But as she came of age at the peak of the nineties’ diet culture, her relationship with her body became fraught, and she began to resent the culinary culture of her Appalachian heritage.It wasn’t until her own daughter was born that she realized another body depended upon her nourishment.That was when she set out to learn how to cook and reclaim her ancestor’s food traditions. In Provisions, Opelt devotes herself to attending local sorghum boil parties and apple festivals, interviewing farmers, foragers, and herders, and recreating the meals she remembers her Granny serving at her own table.She confronts the false food