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The Jones Family Food Roster
When Alison, a mother of five school-aged children, is diagnosed with a rare and incurable cancer she is initially overwhelmed. As a busy working mother, she agonises about her future and the effect her treatment regime will have on her family.
Then, one of Alison’s friends sets up a roster and a home-cooked meal is brought to the Jones family each day. Family favourites and time-honoured recipes – casseroles, soups and traditional Jewish food – are cooked with love to nurture and heal. As Alison and her family negotiate her first year with cancer, the daily meals become the constant in their lives, bringing them together around the dinner table each evening.
Determined not to let cancer define her, and supported by her community, Alison navigates intensive treatment and discovers she can do more than she ever thought possible. When her son is also diagnosed with cancer, she is there to support him.
Warm, honest and engaging, and including recipes that sustained Alison and her family, The Jones Family Food Roster will touch your heart and inspire you to reach out to your community.
By purchasing this book you are raising money for cancer research at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre.
Then, one of Alison’s friends sets up a roster and a home-cooked meal is brought to the Jones family each day. Family favourites and time-honoured recipes – casseroles, soups and traditional Jewish food – are cooked with love to nurture and heal. As Alison and her family negotiate her first year with cancer, the daily meals become the constant in their lives, bringing them together around the dinner table each evening.
Determined not to let cancer define her, and supported by her community, Alison navigates intensive treatment and discovers she can do more than she ever thought possible. When her son is also diagnosed with cancer, she is there to support him.
Warm, honest and engaging, and including recipes that sustained Alison and her family, The Jones Family Food Roster will touch your heart and inspire you to reach out to your community.
By purchasing this book you are raising money for cancer research at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre.
- GenresNonfiction
288 pages, Paperback
Published April 29, 2019
2 people are currently reading
51 people want to read
About the author
Alison Jones
106 books5 followersLibrarian Note: There are more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
June 16, 2019
THE JONES FAMILY FOOD ROSTER BY. ALISON JONES.
Wow what can I say! What an amazing book! Alison Jones has never written a book, something I find hard to believe! Her story writing was absolutely wonderful, full of honesty , bravery and brimming with wicked humour. Alison Jones, mother of five, is diagnosed with Multiple Myeloma, a treatable but not curable form of blood cancer. This book is Alison’s journey to date as she describes her fears, her positive thoughts, as well as the stories of the love and care she receives from her family and the local Melbourne Jewish community she is blessed to be a part of. Throughout the book she shares the many meals and recipes from her kind and caring family and friends.
Alison, if you get to read my review, please know I think you are just fabulous. We can all take a leaf out of your book and learn how to live life to the fullest. You are just awesome. May you continue to stay healthy and, most of all, keep writing! Thank you for sharing your story. Loved your wonderful book!
Wow what can I say! What an amazing book! Alison Jones has never written a book, something I find hard to believe! Her story writing was absolutely wonderful, full of honesty , bravery and brimming with wicked humour. Alison Jones, mother of five, is diagnosed with Multiple Myeloma, a treatable but not curable form of blood cancer. This book is Alison’s journey to date as she describes her fears, her positive thoughts, as well as the stories of the love and care she receives from her family and the local Melbourne Jewish community she is blessed to be a part of. Throughout the book she shares the many meals and recipes from her kind and caring family and friends.
Alison, if you get to read my review, please know I think you are just fabulous. We can all take a leaf out of your book and learn how to live life to the fullest. You are just awesome. May you continue to stay healthy and, most of all, keep writing! Thank you for sharing your story. Loved your wonderful book!
July 30, 2019
I read a lot of 'cancerographies'. At the time of writing, there are 29 on my Goodreads list. That probably doesn't make me a 'typical' reader. As somebody who has had cancer, has relatives with cancer, and as an ex Community Champion on the Macmillan peer support community, I'm a bit of a cancerologist and I've read a lot of books by people who've had a wide range of different cancers. When I spotted this one available through my local library's free ebook scheme, I grabbed it. I've read the good, the bad and the ugly of cancer books and this is rather a 'middling' book.
This is my first book about Multiple Myeloma and it's particularly pertinent because my step-father has had this nasty bone marrow cancer for the past 7 and a half years. It's not particularly rare - despite what the book claims - although having it as advanced in a person as young as Alison Jones is much less common. The book 'blurb' doesn't tell you she has MM - though I guessed as soon as she had the broken arm that this was probably the case. Read enough books and hang out with people with a disease and you get pretty good at diagnosing.
The fact that the blurb doesn't tell us what type of cancer she has is a bit off-putting to me. I'm left asking myself "Who is this book supposed to be for? What's it trying to achieve".
To be fair, every case of myeloma tends to be very different from every other so it's a particularly hard type of cancer to write a 'useful' book about. The description of her cancers as 'a blood cancer' seems intentionally obtuse - perhaps to suck in the much larger pool of those suffering with (or supporting those who have) the various different forms of leukemia. Likewise there's something strange about her choice to omit to tell us what type of cancer her son has in the last few pages of the book (I can guess that too but I just wonder why she's so vague).
This book is not really about MM. It's not really about the treatment or particularly about the symptoms. I'd characterise it more as an extended 'thank you letter' to the author's community who stepped up in remarkable style to provide Jones's family with daily 3-course meals. They are supportive to a degree that few cancer patients will be lucky enough to experience. It's also about motherhood, Judaism, family and a whole bunch of other warm and fuzzy things. It's basically a 'nice' story.
The telling of the tale almost entirely in the present tense is pretty irritating. I could have done without that. It's not a helpful affectation and occasionally it slips into past tense.
Finally, I LOATHE books that squeeze recipes into a story. If I want recipes, I'll buy a recipe book. I know what the author was trying to do, but I just skip over those sections. It's not as if she's offering 'cancer-friendly' or particularly nourishing recipes - indeed early in the book she expresses a wish to follow a vegan diet and almost every recipe isn't vegetarian, let alone vegan so their relevance is particularly low.
I wish Alison Jones all the best with her ongoing treatment. I'm baffled that she seemed to get through so much treatment without feeling a lot sicker than she did - I wish my poor step-father had done half as well as she seems to have. I think Alison Jones's youth and great fitness has helped her enormously in her treatment and with advances in MM treatment, she could have a long and happy life ahead of her.
This is my first book about Multiple Myeloma and it's particularly pertinent because my step-father has had this nasty bone marrow cancer for the past 7 and a half years. It's not particularly rare - despite what the book claims - although having it as advanced in a person as young as Alison Jones is much less common. The book 'blurb' doesn't tell you she has MM - though I guessed as soon as she had the broken arm that this was probably the case. Read enough books and hang out with people with a disease and you get pretty good at diagnosing.
The fact that the blurb doesn't tell us what type of cancer she has is a bit off-putting to me. I'm left asking myself "Who is this book supposed to be for? What's it trying to achieve".
To be fair, every case of myeloma tends to be very different from every other so it's a particularly hard type of cancer to write a 'useful' book about. The description of her cancers as 'a blood cancer' seems intentionally obtuse - perhaps to suck in the much larger pool of those suffering with (or supporting those who have) the various different forms of leukemia. Likewise there's something strange about her choice to omit to tell us what type of cancer her son has in the last few pages of the book (I can guess that too but I just wonder why she's so vague).
This book is not really about MM. It's not really about the treatment or particularly about the symptoms. I'd characterise it more as an extended 'thank you letter' to the author's community who stepped up in remarkable style to provide Jones's family with daily 3-course meals. They are supportive to a degree that few cancer patients will be lucky enough to experience. It's also about motherhood, Judaism, family and a whole bunch of other warm and fuzzy things. It's basically a 'nice' story.
The telling of the tale almost entirely in the present tense is pretty irritating. I could have done without that. It's not a helpful affectation and occasionally it slips into past tense.
Finally, I LOATHE books that squeeze recipes into a story. If I want recipes, I'll buy a recipe book. I know what the author was trying to do, but I just skip over those sections. It's not as if she's offering 'cancer-friendly' or particularly nourishing recipes - indeed early in the book she expresses a wish to follow a vegan diet and almost every recipe isn't vegetarian, let alone vegan so their relevance is particularly low.
I wish Alison Jones all the best with her ongoing treatment. I'm baffled that she seemed to get through so much treatment without feeling a lot sicker than she did - I wish my poor step-father had done half as well as she seems to have. I think Alison Jones's youth and great fitness has helped her enormously in her treatment and with advances in MM treatment, she could have a long and happy life ahead of her.
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June 1, 2019There are some pretty special people in this world that will do anything to ensure that those around them have everything they need, especially during times of uncertainty. The community that nurtures and feeds Alison, her husband and four children during a diagnosis of cancer, will put a smile on your face and a bit of warmth in your heart.
What’s it about?
After breaking a bone much more easily than it should, Alison Jones was diagnosed with a rare and incurable blood cancer, myeloma. This book follows her through her diagnosis of cancer and the fight that follows. Alison’s story is about her wanting to be the best mother that she can, and the heart and kindness of those on The Jones Family Food Roster. Some of these people share their recipes and the stories behind them.
Why I love it
There is so much to love about this book, especially the selflessness of Alison’s friends and other people within the community. This book shows that a giving neighbourhood is still strong, even though we know our ‘neighbours’ less than we have before.
I love that this book is not just about Cancer, it is more than that. It is about a woman who learns to let go and let others, it’s about an illness not defining her but making her brave, and it’s about Alison taking her experience and being able to take that to support her son when he also has a cancer diagnosis himself.
I also love that people on the roster have shared their recipes and the stories behind these. There are tips, notes on how to mate gluten free, dairy free, nut free etc… The food that the food roster participants made catered to the Jones’s family kosher eating.
Everything Else
Throughout this journey it was important to Alison that life remain as normal as possible, including regular homemade meals. The fact that the community around her without even knowing this was her wish was a wonderful testament to the goodness of people. The relief that Alison felt moved me because during her time of uncertainty there was one thing, she was certain of – her family would be well fed. In fact, it became a fun time for the family and the children soon had favourtie meals and were eager to know who was on the roster.
If you are looking for a heart filled and courageous read, this book is perfect for you. It is not something I would normally pick up to read but I am glad I did because I really enjoyed getting to know Alison and her family.
This book is warm and engaging, it’s honest, and I came away with an understand of how Alison’s faith was integral to her healing and growth during one of the toughest times of her life.
Thank you Black Inc. Books for the opportunity to read and honestly review this book.
What’s it about?
After breaking a bone much more easily than it should, Alison Jones was diagnosed with a rare and incurable blood cancer, myeloma. This book follows her through her diagnosis of cancer and the fight that follows. Alison’s story is about her wanting to be the best mother that she can, and the heart and kindness of those on The Jones Family Food Roster. Some of these people share their recipes and the stories behind them.
Why I love it
There is so much to love about this book, especially the selflessness of Alison’s friends and other people within the community. This book shows that a giving neighbourhood is still strong, even though we know our ‘neighbours’ less than we have before.
I love that this book is not just about Cancer, it is more than that. It is about a woman who learns to let go and let others, it’s about an illness not defining her but making her brave, and it’s about Alison taking her experience and being able to take that to support her son when he also has a cancer diagnosis himself.
I also love that people on the roster have shared their recipes and the stories behind these. There are tips, notes on how to mate gluten free, dairy free, nut free etc… The food that the food roster participants made catered to the Jones’s family kosher eating.
Everything Else
Throughout this journey it was important to Alison that life remain as normal as possible, including regular homemade meals. The fact that the community around her without even knowing this was her wish was a wonderful testament to the goodness of people. The relief that Alison felt moved me because during her time of uncertainty there was one thing, she was certain of – her family would be well fed. In fact, it became a fun time for the family and the children soon had favourtie meals and were eager to know who was on the roster.
If you are looking for a heart filled and courageous read, this book is perfect for you. It is not something I would normally pick up to read but I am glad I did because I really enjoyed getting to know Alison and her family.
This book is warm and engaging, it’s honest, and I came away with an understand of how Alison’s faith was integral to her healing and growth during one of the toughest times of her life.
Thank you Black Inc. Books for the opportunity to read and honestly review this book.
May 30, 2019
Thank you Alison for sharing your story. The food roster was so heart warming, and some great recipes as well. But the story of your journey and your family was so uplifting. Often we don’t know how to help people in your situation, and how to support family members. Your community and family sound amazing!
June 19, 2019
Uplifting, moving, sad, raw. With tragedy often comes the question why. Why me? Why them and not me? Why me and not them? Why now? Why? For anyone who has suffered a tragedy, mostly this answer goes unanswered. How the tragedy defines a person is often a testament to their courage and this author simply shines. Love the addition of recipes throughout.
October 18, 2025
This is an inspiring story about community and connection. It’s filled with hope and care, showing how people come together to support one another. I don’t often try new recipes, but I even cooked one from the book and it turned out great. A thoughtful and grounding read, and a lovely gift from Alison at a recent conference.
April 28, 2019
An emotional, raw and inspiring story about a mother of five’s battle with multiple myeloma. But she does not battle the disease on her own as her local Jewish community supports her and her family in a heart-warming way.
August 4, 2019
Loved!
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews