Born in Nashua to Greek immigrants, Georgia and Betty Sardonis ate, slept and breathed the very essence of a culture steeped in family, dawn-to-dusk work, church, community and – perhaps most of all – a culinary acumen that’s the stuff of legend.

Jimmy Sardonis, the patriarch of the family that included outgoing, gracious wife Poppy and three sons known, among other things, for their athletic prowess in Nashua High’s Harvey-Marandos era, was a larger-than-life personality who sold insurance but was most at home behind the counter of Sardy’s, his 1950s- and ’60s-era diner at 219 Main St.

So it would seem natural that one day, one or two of Jimmy Sardonis’s offspring would collect and publish some of his and his wife’s old-country recipes that hooked many a downtown visitor at first bite.

But it was a fun, tongue-in-cheek quip by Dan Songster, Betty’s husband, that threw the first spark for a nearly 300-page tome rich in all things Greek – but mainly their journeys to their homeland and the exquisite food they found along the way.

“A Greek Journey With Fork and Pen: Two Sisters Find Their Roots,” which rolled off the presses in early May, toggles seamlessly between culinary history and to-die-for recipes, family memories and brief, personal journal entries by each of them.

“On our first trip (to Greece) together, we were remarking how great the food is,” Georgia Cone said this week by phone from her Randolph, Vt., home. “One day we were on a ferry, Dan laughed and said, ‘(the sisters) ought to write a book, call it ‘Eating Our Way Through Greece,’” she said with a laugh.

The name didn’t stick, but the idea did.

“That’s exactly what it felt like we were doing,” Betty Songster said, also speaking this week from her home, which is in the south Los Angeles suburb of Lake Forest, Calif., near Mission Viejo. “Things just went from there.”

The sisters “eventually got serious about it,” Songster said. “We realized, we really can write a book about our travels.”

It was in 1999, shortly after their second of three trips to Greece, that Cone and Songster began collecting old family recipes and putting them with new ones they brought home. At the same time, they perused their travel journals as well as those of their husbands for appropriate quips and scene-setters, and “A Greek Journey” was underway.

“The Sardonis sisters have written a real winner!” gushes an online reviewer named Deb. M. “The journal entries by the sisters and their husbands are warm, charming and fun,” she wrote, also calling the book “a can’t-miss cookbook.”

That approach – interspersing recipes with journal entries, personal recollections and observations, adding spice with family history – may very well be what hooks readers in the first place. It also made writing the book a whole lot of fun.

“Each time we pulled an entry from a journal it was like revisiting that place,” Songster said. “It was just so much fun. We were taking our trips all over again.”

Her sister agreed. “We figured, as long as we’re collecting recipes and describing the food, we might as well describe where we were when we tried that particular dish,” Cone said. “By following our itinerary, readers could ‘travel’ through us.”

Cone and Songster left Nashua for college after graduating from Nashua High School – Georgia in 1959 and Betty in 1962. They married and raised families, living in different places before settling in their current homes.

Although they moved on after high school, the sisters carry plenty of fond memories of growing up in a smaller, more nuclear Nashua.

The old Annunciation Grove comes quickly to mind, as well it should – owned by the former Church of the Annunciation, the pine-wooded grove, spread out over land where St. Philip Church is today, hosted more than a few Greek community parties, outings and celebrations over the decades.

“I grew up going to every Greek picnic I could,” Cone said, recalling her family’s frequent visits to Annunciation for all kinds of events.

Another bit of Nashua nostalgia Cone remembers is the downtown merchants’ annual Halloween window-painting contest, where kids trotted out jars of paint and their art skills to put downtown in the Halloween spirit.

“I won first prize one year,” Cone said, adding that her canvas happened to be one of the big front windows of The Telegraph’s old 60 Main St. headquarters.

Living the proverb “it’s all about the journey, not the destination,” Cone and Songster have been anything but aggressive in promoting the book. They have done a couple of local book-signings and Cone said she’ll soon appear on a community TV show that features local people’s accomplishments, but nobody’s planning a coast-to-coast book-release tour.

Cone said copies are on the shelves of book stores in Montpelier and Barre, Vt., and at Dartmouth College. Randolph’s book store carries it too, she said, but sadly, it’s closing down soon.

Also, Cone said that Songster did an informal meet-the-author signing during a recent local Greek festival out her way, which prompted me to take the liberty of floating a little idea.

What if, I asked Cone, she and her sister might be able to box up some books and arrange a little jaunt back to their old hometown sometime in the near future? We Nashuans, I assured her, still love celebrating our local boys and girls, no matter how long ago they left home.

This fall is out; the globetrotting foursome is headed back to Greece, this time, Cone said, to celebrate the completion of the book. And forget about winter; who’s going to ask a southern Californian to come to Nashua in the winter?

Which brings us to spring. How appropriate, I told Cone; St. Philip Church’s famous Greek Food Festival happens to fall right in the middle of May, spring’s most pleasant month. What better venue for a pair of Nashua-born Greek ladies to share a 300-page, Nashua-flavored labor of love than at, or at least in conjunction with, a food-centric event like Nashua’s own Greek Food Festival?

Stay tuned.

Dean Shalhoup’s column runs Saturdays in The Telegraph. He can be reached at 594-6443 or dshalhoup@nashuatelegraph.com. Also, follow Shalhoup on Twitter (Telegraph_DeanS).