Tasting tradition

By Staff
PCHS holds cookbook fundraiser
Kim West
PHIL CAMPBELL – The Phil Campbell High School chapter of Future Career and Community Leaders has cooked up a winning recipe to help fund renovations for the school's Family and Consumer Sciences Building.
The FCCLA started collecting recipes from students, teachers and alumni more than three months ago for a "Taste of Tradition" cookbook, and the hardbound yellow-and-gold books with built-in easel backs arrived last December.
"We started taking recipes in October, and we started selling them when they arrived during the second or third week of December," said Amy Gunderman, FCCLA adviser and FACS teacher at Phil Campbell. "We have 200 cookbooks left out of the 600 we ordered. We had a goal of selling 400, but we ended up ordering 600 instead because it costs a lot more to re-print – it's better to have extra on hand so we have enough to sell them throughout the year."
Gunderman said the fundraiser will raise $2,500 if every cookbook is sold. The proceeds will be used by the FACS department to purchase furniture and renovation projects.
"We have new appliances for the kitchen this year, including stoves, refrigerators and mixers," she said. "But we don't have furniture for the living room or conference room, and we would like to get the floor re-finished."
Gunderman said she has received positive feedback about the 630-recipe cookbook, which included submissions from every student enrolled in the FACS program and also from three former FACS teachers at Phil Campbell.
"I have 144 students enrolled in family and consumer sciences, and all 144 turned in a recipe, so it was really a class-wide project," Gunderman said. "And all of the former family and consumer science teachers at Phil Campbell – Ms. Humphries, Ms. Stanford and Ms. Ayres – contributed a recipe.
"People have been very complimentary of them – I had a lady (Sunday) tell me that she bought five of them and used them as Christmas gifts, and I had one student who sold 20 cookbooks."
Brooke Hallman, an eighth-grader and FCCLA class representative, said she had little difficulty selling the cookbooks to family members.
"I sold my cookbooks to my grandparents and their friends," said Hallman, who submitted her grandparents' "Ritz Broccoli Casserole" recipe for the cookbook. "Every FCCLA member had to sell four cookbooks, but it was easy to sell them."
The cookbooks are $15 and are available for purchase at Ava's China &Gifts, Mid South Merchandise, Russellville Pharmacy, Franklin County Times, B&J Cafe in East Franklin and Unique Apparel in Haleyville.