About Me

Even though I live close to a “big city” now, I was born and forever will be a small town gal. I grew up in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Canada and spent the first half my life there. I became a mother just after I turned 20 to a beautiful baby boy and within a couple of years, 1989 to be exact, decided to move us from a small town to a big city to take advantage of better job opportunities. Let me tell ya…the culture shock was massive, but I managed to assimilate quickly and fool everyone into thinking I was sophisticated and knew what I was doing. Yeah..OK, who I am trying to kid? What’s that saying? “You can take the girl out of the small town, but you can’t take the small town out of the girl.”…or something like that!

Thirty years later, I still live true to my small town values. I say hello to everyone I pass on the street, I talk to strangers in the supermarket (even when they don’t want to talk back to me), I have no problem with people landing at my door without calling first (unless I had a lazy day and the place was a mess and then I offer them baked goods as an apology – at you John!) and last, but certainly not least…I take care of people.

I can’t pass by someone who seems to be struggling, without asking if I can help in any way. I check in on my 95 year old neighbour every day because he has no family near and I make sure he has a balanced meal a couple of times a week. I regularly buy a burger and milk (or a small bag of non perishable groceries when I have a few extra bucks) for the old gent outside Walmart who is not exactly homeless, but relies on handouts because his pension is only enough to cover his rent.

After a few great jobs, I finally settled in my current career (13 years and counting now). It’s a global company, so I have had the chance to travel a bit and expand my horizons. In the last few years, I was able to get a few stamps on my passport!

A couple of years ago, I was diagnosed with cancer. It turned out that I had a large tumor on my uterus and second, smaller tumor on an ovary. I went through a year of surgery and chemo and radiation. There were a lot of sleepless nights where I baked and tested out recipes. The chemo nurses loved when that happened because that meant that I brought them lots of goodies!  I really don’t like complex recipes. I like simple, easy to make things.  So when I found a great recipe, or threw together ingredients that really worked, I would write the recipe down on a slip of paper. After I started “misplacing” those notes (I’m blaming it on chemo brain) I decided there must be a better way to keep track of them. Hence, my recipe website “Jeanne’s Recipes & Stuff” was born.

Jump to now, a few years later. I am not baking as much because I found out that I am diabetic. I do still bake and cook, but I have set my sights on learning more about diabetes and healthy foods to control it.

I have decided to take my website on a different journey. I still want to keep track of my recipes and share them with others, however, I decided that I needed a blog site so that I can explore other topics. I decided to “renovate” Jeanne’s Recipes & Stuff. It has now been renamed “Jeanne’s Stuff”. The recipes will still be there, but this leaves me room to grow the site into a blog and introduce other topics such as art, travel and whatever else strikes my fancy.

I hope you will enjoy my “new” blog! If you want to follow it, please subscribe and I will make sure you are kept up to date when new posts are available.