Joanne's Recipes

I just realized, when I was writing some journal entries about my mother, that the New Year tradition in her family was oyster stew on New Year's eve, either for breakfast or dinner. I thought, for the past few years, that it was on Christmas. While I wouldn't be too far off, my notes in my journals led me back down the right path. I don't have a note card in mom's recipe boxes for oyster stew. Mom taught it to me, whether she realized it or not, when I was watching her in her kitchen on New Year's eve day in 2013. She told me her father used to purchase the oysters at a fish store in Roanoke, Virginia, when she was growing up, and he was the one who taught her how to make the stew. The stew, which serves about four people, is really simple with just four ingredients: 1-2 Pints of fresh shucked oysters in oyster "juice" (two pints if you love oysters) 1 Quart of whole milk, no 2%, but you can try nut milks if you want, as long as they're as fatty as p...

My mother in 1953, the summer before her December wedding. Hi folks! This blog is all about cooking, but it was founded by all the recipes I discovered in my parents' house after my mother died from a rare cancer in June of 2014. I started a Facebook page where I photographed her recipe cards and gave some backstory to the images. But, as I began to learn more about how she ate and what she fed to her children, I became more involved in my own food discoveries. So this blog is not only about my mother's recipes, but a conglomerate of her 20th-century lifestyle and my current lifestyle at age 70. It's taken a lifetime to learn my body, and that's a long story. I'm still experimenting, mainly with an anti-inflammatory meal plan, but with added healthy fats and calcium. I hope this site also will provide you with new information about the foods you might consume. There are so many exciting new food sites and cookbooks available, all filled with non-traditional menus an...