Reader Bernadette Miner, who is also president of the Standard Oil Annuitant Club of Whiting, asked me to be a guest speaker earlier this month at their November meeting in Whiting.

The members, all retired employees from the refinery, shared a lunch celebration with me in Whiting marking two milestones. Their organization is 90 years old in the same year that is the 20th anniversary of the publishing of my first cookbook in 2004, “From the Farm: Family Recipes and Memories of a Lifetime.”

Bernadette also asked me to discuss not only my cookbook but also my columns and writings. When I asked the room of nearly 80 people in attendance how many of them received a cherished daily newspaper still delivered to their doorstep, even I was surprised that nearly every hand in the room lifted.

A 240-page hardcover, which many faithful readers refer to as “the brown-cover cookbook written with Phyllis Diller,” I am extra proud that my first book ever published was not only hardcover but includes a 12-page color photo center spread with rare photographs from our family farm dating from the 1940s and 1950s reproduced from color slides. The book also includes photos, recipes and stories featuring Milton Berle; Maxene Andrews of The Andrews Sisters appearing a decade earlier in concert in 1994 at The Center for Visual and Performing Arts in Munster; Bob Hope; Julia Child; Fannie Flagg; Carol Channing; and Munchkin friends from the 1939 “The Wizard of Oz” film classic.

Of course, most of all, the beloved book is a compiled column collection of reader and farm pantry recipes that are so treasured, spanning the first two years of published columns from when the column launched in April 2002 through early 2004 in the pages of The Times of Northwest Indiana.

Some of the favorite showcased recipes from cover-to-cover include Auntie Judy’s Everyday Bread, Joann Scamerhorn’s Rubbed Sage Breakfast Pork Sausage Gravy and Uncle Swede’s Dandelion Wine to Grandma Green’s Homemade Chicken Soup, Grandma Potempa’s Simple Fruit Jam Kolachky, my mom Peggy’s Baked Sauerkraut and Pork Ribs Supper, and President Jimmy Carter’s Peanut Butter and Jelly Muffins, as well as a special chapter by funny lady Diller spotlighting her own best kitchen gems.

We said goodbye to Phyllis Diller at age 95 in August 2012, and as for the availability of the first cookbook, only 1,800 copies were printed in May 2004, and the book has long been out of print. Occasionally at my stage cooking shows or when doing an author event, I have repurposed copies of the book found at an estate sale available for purchase.

Dedicated reader Candace Mitchell of Lake Village wrote to me this fall asking where to find my original cookbook and said she had been waiting for me to speak or appear at any events or book signings near her address.

“Philip! I love your columns and have been following you and reading your columns for years,” Candace wrote in her mailed note.

“I see you are appearing as the emcee for a chef’s event at Fair Oaks Farm Oct. 3, and I’ve already bought my ticket. I’m hoping you will have a copy of your original cookbook for me to purchase. Thank you! Candace”

I set aside a clean, pre-read copy of my first cookbook, and she added it to her cookbook library, assuring me that “even if these recipes are 20 years old, they are new to me.”

As I told the members of the Standard Oil Annuitant Club of Whiting at their luncheon earlier this month, everything once old is new again when passed along to the next generation.

For today’s featured recipe, I told the refinery retirees I would search and research a recipe to showcase from John D. Rockefeller, who founded the Standard Oil Company in 1870 and ran it until 1897 when he chose retirement and a focus on philanthropy and charities.

Ranking as our country’s first billionaire with his fortune worth nearly 2% of our national economy at the time, his wealth was estimated in 1913 at $900 million. He died at age 97 in 1937, and his son John D. Rockefeller Jr. took over the company until his death in 1960 at age 86.

One of my favorite recipes, and also one never featured previously in my columns or cookbooks, is for Oysters Rockefeller. The recipe was dreamed up in 1889 at Antoine’s restaurant in the French Quarter of New Orleans by owner Jules Alciatore, son of the restaurant’s namesake Antoine Alciatore. The richness of the ingredients of the buttery sauce, breadcrumbs and ingredients is why it was named in honor of the equally rich John D. Rockefeller.

During my 1990s Mardi Gras trekking years, I’ve dined at Antoine’s, which opened in 1840 and is considered one of our country’s oldest restaurants, with a who’s who patron list that includes Pope John Paul II, Elizabeth Taylor, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Al Capone, General Patton and every U.S. President since Herbert Hoover. The management of Antoine’s has always said they will never reveal the ingredient secret of the “green topped sauce” for their oysters Rockefeller (some say simple minced parsley), but the folks at “What’s Cooking America” hit a very close home run with their version, which I’ve adapted with my own tweaks.

Columnist Philip Potempa has published four cookbooks and is the director of marketing at Theatre at the Center. He can be reached at pmpotempa@comhs.org or mail your questions: From the Farm, PO Box 68, San Pierre, Ind. 46374.