Joan Ungerleider is a granddaughter, daughter, wife, mother and grandmother and who has for years taken time to write the story of her family. The transformation of those family stories into anecdotes has yielded a pleasant result that the former newspaper editor didn’t necessarily anticipate.

“I felt that I should leave some memories with my children,” Ungerleider said. “Turns out that almost everything I thought about had to do with food, so I started adding recipes.”

More than a cookbook, “Cooking With the Cherry Tomato Lady,” is a collection of family stories with a healthy smattering of more than 200 recipes that Ungerleider wanted to share with readers.

The book’s name is taken from Ungerleider’s grandmother, who nurtured turtles in her basement before turning them into soup. She shared her love of cooking with her family, but eventually became unable to cook. Instead, she turned her passion into growing cherry tomatoes. The tomatoes became a constant gift to the ones she loved. “Cooking With the Cherry Tomato Lady” contains recipes from six generations of Ungerleider’s family.

Ungerleider grew up in Ohio and lived there before moving to Georgia 10 years ago. While in Ohio, she worked as a journalist and editor for the Dayton Daily News and the Kettering-Oakwood Times, beginning as a food and features writer. She is a member of the Greensboro Writer’s Guild. Members of the guild encouraged her to turn her stories into a published volume that resulted in “Cooking With the Cherry Tomato Lady.”

Some of the recipes are familiar while others are not. Ungerleider shares a recipe for Farmer’s Sodas, a concoction of ice cream topped with red cream soda.

“We weren’t dirt poor, but we didn’t have a lot of money,” she said. “Sometimes we would not have ice cream and would mix milk and the soda and get the same taste.”

She also talks about cooking Pronto Pups, closely related to corndogs. The batter, Ungerleider said, is also perfect for Vidalia Onion Rings.

One of the best surprises in the book is for Secret Ingredient Cake. That secret ingredient will be a pleasant shock to anyone eating the treat.

Ungerleider’s undertaking may also result in yet another unintended consequence as she is already planning for another cookbook of southern cuisine. Her 13-year-old granddaughter has already pledged to help pen a portion of the book with her own family recipes from extended family in Louisiana.

“My intention was to leave something of their heritage to my children and grandchildren,” she said. “What pleases me most is the question, ‘Grandma, when are you coming to see me, I want us to cook together’.”

“Cooking With the Cherry Tomato Lady,” is available at shops on Lake Oconee and is also available at Target and Amazon.com.