She calls it a cookbook, but it’s more like a reflection of another time. It definitely is a heritage book. In addition to an amazing number of recipes, it tells about family, friends, and offers great advice on cooking. It also has a great section on “Hints, Herbs & Remedies”. The books is 296 pages and once you start to read it, you don’t want to put it down.
It all started when a little girl, named Joy, was often sent to look in a round, decorated, wooden box to find what her mother wanted. It was there that her mother kept all her recipes and notes for cures, spices, and sound advice. Everything was just tossed in and mixed up. Joy Gillespie will tell you how she resented being sent to find whatever recipe her mother wanted.
In order to better understand how this cookbook came about you need to know more about Joy’s heritage. Joy Oakley Gillespie was an only child, but family meant everything to her. There were a lot of relatives. Her mother’s great-great-grandmother had 23 children! Joy’s mother, Jane, was the eldest child in a family with nine children, three girls and six boys. Obviously, Jane grew up making large meals. Before and after she married she loved to have big dinners and would celebrate anything. Joy’s mother was a mountain girl. She was born on November 13, 1905 and raised in a three room cabin high on a mountain top. The place was called Bee Log, North Carolina. She attended Bee Log School and Bee Log Church and was baptized in the Bald Mountain creek when she was 12 years old. From this upbringing in the mountains of North Carolina, her mother and her way of life would be forever enshrined by her only child, Joy!
One day, in 1998, Joy came up with the idea of doing something with all those recipes in that round wooden box. She decided to do a cookbook in her mother’s honor - Jane Pate Oakley. However, there was a problem. Her mother wrote down the recipes and when it came to somethings, like spices or flavorings, the recipe would call for “just a pinch or this or that”. Joy knew that would not due and she would have to have exacting measurements. This resulted in week after week, month after month, of Joy Gillespie in the kitchen making all those recipes and getting the measurements down to correct size. It took her nine months of sorting, testing and spending most of her days cooking in the kitchen. She also was happy to find the recipes for her mother’s annual Christmas dinner. She finally finished it and the first printing sold out in 18 months. At a trade show in Augusta, Georgia, “Moma’s Mountain Cooking And Her Christmas Diner” was called “ ...one of the best Southern cookbooks.”
The cookbook had four printings. It was out of print for three years. However, by popular demand and repeated letters and phone calls, the fifth printing came about. Cookbook author, Joy Gillespie said: “I would have never thought there would be a fifth printing.” People call her from everywhere. Her cookbook is in almost in every state in the union, even in Hawaii. Both President Bush’s wives have copies. Demands for her cookbook are always very big around Christmas time.
Joy Gillespie has always been an active lady. She has taught at Isothermal Community College and Cleveland Tech. She was also in demand for appearances on many television shows and radio. What started as a tribute to her loving mother, has kept her very busy. She is married to Bailey Gillespie, a Korean war hero and former POW. Believe it or not, they married two weeks after they met. This coming February 12, 2012 they will celebrate their 58th wedding anniversary. If interested in the cookbook, the best way to get a hold of her is to write her: Joy Gillespie, P.O. Box 365, Spindale, N. C. 28160. This heritage treasure cookbook sells for only $15.00. Handling and mailing is $5.00. It is truly a treasure.
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