Rosman High School senior wants your best recipe

Jenifer Welch pulls a letter from an envelope, unfolds the white lined note paper and offers the handwritten message to a visitor. "I started crying just because she sent me something so personal," Welch says as she glances over the letter one more time.

The letter to Welch, a 17-year-old Rosman High School senior, is from a Transylvania County cook. It includes a recipe and a personal anecdote about the recipe.

Welch is putting together a cookbook featuring recipes from Transylvania County residents as part of her senior project. She's collecting recipes from teachers, family and friends for their best dishes. And she's extended the search to the community, enlisting local newspapers to help spread the word.

Her cookbook will include a sentimental side, too. She's asked each cook to submit a memory that accompanies the recipe.

So far, Welch has received about 15 responses.

Some cooks send only the facts. They list all the ingredients for the perfect corn casserole or pound cake and leave it at that.

But others, like the letter writer who made Welch cry, come with a story.

In this letter, a woman offers her mother's recipe for an Old-Fashioned Chocolate Pie. It's the same pie her brother loved to eat before he went missing in action in Vietnam in 1968 and was never heard from again.

"When I make this, I think of how much he loved to eat," the woman wrote.

Others have included stories about cooking with family and the happy times they have shared.

"This was my Mom's best pound cake," one woman wrote. "My Mom was the best cook in the world. Every time I make it, I remember her."

Reading the letters she receives along with recipes has helped Welch realize how much a favorite meal can mean to people.

"I'm learning more than just cooking," Welch says. "It's no longer just my project. I've brought the community into it."

And that is precisely the point of asking Welch and her classmates to produce a senior project, says Linda Peeples. Peeples teaches the Senior English class where all senior projects originate.

"It sends students out to the community," Peeples says. "You can't evaluate grade-wise what students learn."

Rosman began requiring its seniors to complete senior projects during the 1996-97 school year. The project is a three-part process that includes a physical project, an eight to 10 page research paper related to the project and a board presentation before a panel of judges with expertise in the area. Students also work with teacher mentors and mentors with expertise in the field they are exploring.

By the end of the last school, senior projects were required at each of Henderson County's high schools by the end of the year. North Carolina is mandating senior projects as a graduation requirement, beginning with the class of 2010. As a result, many area high schools have phased in the senior projects over the last few years.

For Rosman students, finishing all the components by the end of the semester - in November - is challenging but also rewarding to students, Peeples says.

"They look back and see what they've done," she says.

Welch, a slight, soft-spoken teen, is continuing to collect recipes and is beginning to design a cover for the cookbook. She's trying to come up with a Transylvania County theme for the cover. Something besides the waterfalls or white squirrels that the area is already so well known for. Something creative. She plans to print and bind the book at school.

"I want the cookbook to be something different," she says. "I want people to look at it and say, 'Oh, I haven't thought of that.'"

In addition to her cookbook, Welch is writing a research paper about Betty Crocker, one of America's most famous women in the last 100 years. She has learned, among other things, that Betty Crocker isn't a real person.

Betty Crocker, who turned 86 this year, is a fictitious homemaker featured in one of America's most successful marketing campaigns for Minnesota-based General Mills. She even hosted a radio show for 30 years.

A community mentor

As another component of her senior project, Welch is working with a baker in the community who is serving as one of her mentors. She plans to rise at 5 a.m. on a Saturday morning to learn about the baking trade.

Once the cookbook is complete, Welch plans to sell copies to pay for its expenses. She plans to donate any profits to her school's library.

That's welcome news to Rosman High's School media specialist, Sarah Justice, who plans to contribute a recipe.

"I'm so excited," Justice says. "You always need the money. Our budgets are so small. Anything extra helps."

As for her future, Welch doesn't know whether she will pursue cooking in college or as a career. She really hasn't had much cooking experience yet.

"I do enjoy it," she says. "I hope to cook for a family one day.

Or who knows. If she's inspired enough by her cookbook, maybe she could become a real Betty Crocker.