Food Lover Dr. Joseph Flood Discusses Cooking, Shares Recipe

It was a no-brainer. Dr. Flood accepted the position. He and his wife, Jeanne Likins, who holds a PhD in higher education, student development, moved in 1984, settling down in German Village, an historic neighborhood in Columbus that’s one of the largest, privately funded historic districts in the country.

“We still live in this home, 34 years later, the only one we’ve ever owned,” he says. “It sits in one of the most beautiful neighborhoods you’ll ever see.”

Dr. Flood left the multispecialty group after it was purchased by a large hospital and then practiced solo for the next 15 years. Meanwhile, he worked his way up from assistant professor to clinical professor of internal medicine at OSU. He joined the Columbus Arthritis Center in 2012, where he still practices today.

Since then, Dr. Flood has served as president of the ACR (2013–14) and has been designated a Master of the College.

‘If it was okay for my dad to be in the kitchen, it was okay for me.’ —Dr. Flood

Childhood Memories

Some of Dr. Flood’s recipes were passed down from his mother and instantly remind him of his childhood.

“My mother learned to make chicken paprikash from her mother,” he says, adding that it’s a popular Hungarian dish. “When I cook it, smell it and put it together, it brings back wonderful memories of her and her passion for food.”

Click here to see/download Dr. Flood’s gazpacho soup recipe.

His father, however, preferred making Chinese food. Dr. Flood jokes that his family was probably the first non-Chinese family in Cleveland to own a wok. Among Dr. Flood’s favorite dishes of his father’s is barbecued beef.

“He would go to his favorite Asian restaurants and [get] the recipe out of the owners, who were usually kind to him because he was the cop on the beat in their neighborhood,” Dr. Flood says.

Community Affair

Every year, Dr. Flood says his neighborhood offers a tour of 10 historic houses in the community as a fundraiser for the German Village Society, which maintains the historic neighborhood. Dr. Flood and his wife, along with other members of the historic community, sell tickets to dinner parties hosted in their own homes, donating all proceeds to the society.

The couple’s dinners are very popular and sometimes sell out immediately. Over the past several years, they have enjoyed the company of many guests, including Timothy Laing, MD, a rheumatologist at the University of Michigan, and his wife, Kathy Laing, MD, a dermatologist in private practice.