May 7, 2008

Dear Judges,

For my Senior Project I chose to do something involving cooking. I have always been fascinated by cooking. Even since I was a little kid I have always been around the kitchen, whether it was baking cookies with my mom or helping my dad prepare dinner; and I always enjoyed being there. My original end product was going to be to put on a dinner for my friends and family to show my thanks to them for everything that they have done for me. Unfortunately a few things came up over the course of year that changed my end product. After my original plan was diverted I went with ideas such as, working with my mentor at her restaurant, or cooking for someone that was in need. I did not know what I was going to do until my Government teacher Ms. Berger told me about a spaghetti feed that was going to be put on for an informational night about La Strada Del Arte, and she mentioned that that they needed someone to do the cooking for it. In addition to the spaghetti feed I decided to host a movie night where I showed the movie Rattattoui and cooked it too.

This project was quite interesting for me and I ended up learning a lot about cooking. For example I learned that cooking takes a lot of time. I spent quite a few nights working on creating the best recipe that I could, but the first dinner that I cooked for was a little rushed, so I had to rely on my family and friends to get a recipe that they had already. While doing this project I ran into quite a few road blocks. One of the biggest was the fact that my house caught on fire and I spent most of the time working on that rather than this project, but I still managed to find the time to work on it. I was also able to get a lot of help from my family and their friends, which made this project even more fun and interesting.

This project was a great learning experience; it taught me a lot about myself and about cooking. The process that this project required was extremely time consuming and required a lot of patience, which is something I do not have a whole lot of. So it was actually quite hard for me, but I stuck with it and completed my goal.

Thanks for watching my presentation I hope you enjoy it.

Sincerely,

Sam Brown

This project was a great experience for me. It helped me realize what it could be like to work in a kitchen. Even though it took me a lot more time and effort than I would have liked I still found it quite fun to do all the cooking. During this project I tried to spend one or two nights a week to try out a new recipe, even though a lot of them were dishes that my family had I would still try to put my own spin on it some way or another. I ran into a few complications over the course of this year while trying to do this project, the main one would have been my house catching fire. My plans for this project went through a few different plans, but I am quite proud of how my projected ended up.
This project helped me realize a few things about cooking and myself. The main thing that I learn about cooking I realized after cooking the food for the La Strada dinner. I was told to expect around one hundred people and that was how many I was going to cook for. When I went to do the cooking the night before I expected it to take maybe two or three hour, but when I was finally done I realized that it had actually taken me about eight hours just to cook the vegetarian and meat sauce, and the noodles. I wasn’t ready of that at all but I was willing to stick it out and do it again for another night to put on a movie night. Both feeds that I did turned out  well I got a lot of good revues from the people that came to them, which made me feel good about myself, and telling me that even though I spent so much on creating the food for them it wasn’t in vain.
This project was actually quite difficult for me to accomplish. I had never cooked that much food before in my life nor had I actually spent a lot of time cooking by myself beforehand either. So throughout this project I would take out some time from my day to try and find a recipe that my family and I might enjoy. Even though I found some good recipes I would find that I didn’t have enough time to cook it or I would be to worn out after working at my house all night.
This project became quite hard for me a few times. Like when my house caught fire, I spent about a week in a haze where I didn’t do much and then there was also the fact that once we got the “OK” to start rebuilding I spent almost every night and weekend I had over there, which put a damper on the amount of time I had to work on my project. Then a little while down the road from that my mentor had some troubles at her restaurant which made it so that she was unable to help me out for a while so I had to find someone else to help out with my project. So I asked around for someone to help me with it and then I found help with one of my mom’s friends which made it a little easier for me.
For this project I actually went through a few different ideas for an end project. My original idea was to compile a bunch of barbeque like recipes over the course of the year. Then put a barbeque on for my friend and family to show just how much I appreciated everything that they have done for me. Then my house caught fire and I had to throw that plan out the window. Then my next plan was going to be to try and work with my mentor in her restaurant a few times a week to  learn what it is like cooking in the kitchen, but then some things came up for her and she was going to be unable to do that with me. So for about a month I thought that I wasn’t going to do a senior project. Until my teacher Ms. Berger told me that there was a dinner that was going to be put on and they were in dire need of someone to cook the spaghetti for it. I also felt that I might want to have something else for it so Ms. Berger said something to the fact of having a fundraiser or something like that. I decided to go with that idea and have a movie night where I would show the movie Rattattoui and also cook it too. Both of those nights turned out good in my opinion and many of the people that came told me that it was good and that they enjoyed the food a lot.
            This project was a good learning experience for me and I am glad I was able complete this project. It has taught me a lot about myself and what cooking is like.

I have always enjoyed being in and around the kitchen, so I felt that cooking was what I wanted to do for my Senior Project. This project was a real eye opener for me. I always knew that cooking was a time consuming process, but when I did the first spaghetti feed, I realized how intense the process of cooking for around 100 people actually is.
This project helped me learn a lot about myself and how I do things. I have always enjoyed cooking for a small group of people, but I was totally blown away when I realized what it was like to cook for a large group of people. I am contemplating going into the culinary field after I graduate from high school and this project really helped me understand what it would be like to cook for a restaurant. If I could go back and change anything about my project I would have done more movie nights. It would have been nice to have more of them, since the one that I did turned out really well and everyone that came gave me great compliments on the food, which really made me feel good about myself.
This project has helped develop my idea of what I want to do once I graduate. It has also helped me gain a lot more appreciation for cooks. Being a member the first four-year class to graduate from New Tech was a little difficult since our class was dubbed the “trial and error” class by some of the students. I feel that I got a lot of out coming here and learned a lot about myself in the process. Having the year end with Senior Project seems like a really great thing to do in my opinion, it allowed me to try something that I really had never done before and allowed me to learn a lot about myself. I am glad that I got this opportunity to come here, and I thank my parents for talk me into coming to this school.