by Lauren M Wilson
My zeal for zombies began when I was home from college visiting family for the holidays. It was 2001, and the survival horror video game franchise Resident Evil was making a bloody splash. My little brother and his best friend were having a sleep over, which I promptly crashed when I heard the ruckus coming from his bedroom. It was at that very moment I became a zombie nerd, because once I understood what was going on in that bedroom I would never be the same again.
I proceeded to confiscate the PlayStation to spend the next several nights hunched over in the dark, alone and scaring the crap out of myself while trying to save Raccoon City. From here my zombie enthusiasm spread like the T-Virus, and soon I was into fiction, discussion boards, zombie walks and more. I even managed to amass quite an impressive collection of zombie t-shirts!
Fast forward several years and I had become a professional cook and food writer. It was my good friend Paul who infected me with the idea of a cookbook for the zombie apocalypse. I sat on the idea for several years, even amidst movies like 28 Days Later and Shaun of the Dead being huge box office successes, and books like Max Brooks’ The Zombie Survival Guide making the New York Times Bestseller list. It was when The Walking Dead aired on AMC that I realized zombies were not just a flash in the pop-culture pan. So I decided to pursue writing a cookbook in earnest.
It was now 2011 and I had decided to write a cookbook for the zombie apocalypse. But I had absolutely no idea how to go about doing it. I had no connections to the publishing industry nor did I have any idea what went into writing a cookbook. So I rolled up my sleeves and started from scratch.
Once I realized that writing a cookbook for the zombie apocalypse actually meant writing a food-centric survival guide, I had to go about learning all the things about survival and prepper culture. I didn’t even know how to light a fire! So fleshing out the book was a pretty research-intensive process. But it was an important process, because it would lay the foundations for a future opportunity I had no idea was coming. I read book after book, interviewed experts, went foraging, and carried out questionable experiments in my Brooklyn backyard. I poured everything I had into my first book, The Art of Eating Through the Zombie Apocalypse.
So when I was approached in 2016 to write the official cookbook for AMC’s The Walking Dead, it was a no-brainer. And thankfully I had the knowledge and tools to craft the survival section that the publisher wanted for the book. But being the huge nerd that I am and a big fan of the show, I knew I had to make the book as true to the universe as possible. So again I rolled up my sleeves, opened up Netflix on my laptop and scanned through each and every episode using the preview pop-up on the progress bar, looking for anything food related. When I found something I would stop, watch the scene and take notes. I did this for 99 episodes, when it was all said and done.
Most people are surprised to learn that there is actually quite a lot of food in the show! It’s easy to miss amidst all the undead and human drama, but the show does a great job of making food a consistent struggle for the characters of the show. Because make no mistake: when the zombie apocalypse happens, feeding oneself will become monstrously hard.
Most of the recipes in the book are foods that we see the characters in the show eating or preparing. The rest are foods inspired by characters, locations or situations directly from the show. I did my absolute best to make it fan-approved, and I can only hope fans will enjoy reading it as much as I did writing it! I poured all of my nerd juice into The Walking Dead: The Official Cookbook and Survival Guide and I can only hope it oozes out of the pages when fellow fans dig in. Bon Appetit!
Check out The Walking Dead: The Official Cookbook and Survival Guide now.
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I love The Walking Dead so it was a no-brainer grabbing this book.