This month for Book Club, we’re delving into Food & Recipes of the Smokies in honor of our Appalachian Homecoming. Although the event has passed, if any of the workshops sparked your interest as they did ours, this is the book for you.

If your family is anything like mine, you’ll recall hog jowl and black-eyed peas for New Year’s, apple stack cake at Christmas, and soup beans making frequent appearances on the table—whether you liked it or not. Biscuits were as big as a cat’s head, summer meant snapping beans on the porch, and Leather Britches weren’t just something you wore but something you strung up to dry. These mountain memories, dear to the heart, fill the pages of this book. In many ways, it’s a stroll down memory lane.

If your childhood wasn’t steeped in cornbread and milk, that’s okay too—because it’s never too late to get back to basics, and this cookbook is a perfect place to start.

Published by the Great Smoky Mountains Association, this book offers more than just excellent recipes. It provides a well-rounded glimpse into life in the Smokies before the park, chronicling mountain cooking from the early days of the Cherokee through the 1930s. The range of topics includes growing seasons, agricultural lore, anecdotes, and photos. I won’t give too much away, but it’s a compelling read, and I’d recommend it to anyone interested in the area’s history or the origins of our regional cuisine. Beyond the food, it tells the story of a people and their adaptation to life in the mountains.

Interested? This book is available for purchase at Smoky Mountains Outdoor Center.