1. Jasmine Fahrnbauer
Mrs. Corbett
AP Literature
April 1, 2012
Speech
Did you know that approximately 41 percent of women in America either don’t
know how to cook or choose not to cook for their families on daily basis? Hi my name is
Jasmine Fahrnbauer and for my senior project I decided to not be one of these women
who fall under this statistic. I wanted to create something useful and meaningful and
learn a skill that would be helpful to me for the rest of my life. This lead me to the
creation of my family cookbook.
For my research paper, I decided to explore the art of home cooking. I found that
over the years, the number of families who still have home cooked meals everyday are
greatly decreasing. I wanted to discover what kind of problems this lifestyle is causing,
which lead me to the topic of my research paper, the effects of childhood obesity.
Through my research, I found that the majority of Americans eat fast food or go out to eat
on a daily basis, thus causing the art of home cooking to slowly become a lost art. I
discovered that the majority of people this lifestyle directly affected were children. The
lack of nutrition these children receive from these fast food diets caused them to become
increasingly obese giving them issues that will follow them for the rest of their lives.
Healthy home cooking is one of the easiest ways to prevent childhood obesity. Through
my research I discovered that these home cooked meals are crucial to a child’s ability to
function and achieve their utmost potential in life. Studies have been shown to prove that

2. children who receive poor diets have lower IQs. In a study that came out recently, it was
proven that students with a poor nutrition intake scored lowered on an achievement test
than their peers did with adequate nutrition. Proper nutrition allows the brain to function
quickly and accurately. It is also allows quicker and easier information recall. Proper
sustenance not only benefits a student’s education through their ability to
acquireknowledge but it allows students to stay more physically active. Kids are more
capable of staying active, awake, and less lethargic. During my research for my paper, I
also explored the social effects obesity has on children. Being an obese child
automatically makes kids more susceptible to being victims and perpetrators of bullying.
These children start to become bitter towards their appearance and they begin to take it
out on others and even themselves. They become more self conscious causing their self
esteem to significantly decrease during the most vulnerable stages of their lives. These
are just a few of the many examples of why parents need to switch back to cooking
healthy home cooked meals, instead of fueling their children’s bodies with empty calories
that will eventually give them more health problems. If more parents started cooking for
their children healthy wholesome meals the number of children suffering from obesity
would greatly decrease.
Which lead me to the idea of creating a family cookbook. I didn’t want to become a
mother one day that couldn’t provide a good home cooked meal for my family. So, for
my senior project, I decided to create a family cookbook and learn to cook some of the
recipes. My grandmother was also a huge inspiration behind my project. She grew up in
Germany learning to cook at a young age. Her grandmother taught her everything there is

3. to know about the art of cooking. So one day, my grandmother encouraged me to learn all
the family recipes so that one day when I am a mother I will be able to cook the same
healthy and delicious meals for my family that I grew up tasting. Since most of the
recipes were in her memory and hadn’t been written down, my grandmother always
wanted one of her grandchildren to put together a cookbook and complied all these
recipes into one place so that one day when she is gone, we can hold on to a memory
through her wonderful cooking. Because I knew this would be my last year at home
before leaving for college, I thought this would be a great opportunity to take advantage
of having my grandmother and mother around to teach me their recipes and how to cook.
I started off my project by calling me grandmother and sharing with her my
thoughts for the project. Once I told her about all my ideas, she was thrilled. She agreed
to meet up with me as often as she could. She also told me that she thought it would
probably would be best to include all my aunts recipes in their as well. The beginning of
my project was designated to meeting with my grandmother and discussing her recipes.
She invited me to her house where I was able to write down most of her recipes. A few
days later, I invited all my aunts over and told them to bring their recipes. I talked with
them shortly about my project and they told me recipes while I wrote them down. Since
they didn’t have enough recipes with them I ask if they could email me some more over
the course of the next few weeks. My goal was to get 40 recipes in my cookbook. While I
was busy coordinating and meeting up with my family members I also was meeting up
with my project facilitator, Mrs. Carnes. I chose Mrs. Carnes because she was my Food
nutrition and wellness teacher at the beginning of the year. She gave me good insight on

4. creating my product. We met several times over the course of the year. She helped me
created my outline, find websites for my research paper, and gave me tips on how to cook
each recipes in a healthy way. She also told me what I could do to substitute ingredients
such as eggs and milk. She also told me how to create my cookbook online, even though
I ended up choosing Microsoft word since it was easier to navigate and understand.
Once I received all my recipes, I began to type up my cookbook. The majority of the time
spent on my project was the actual making of the product. Having to type up 43 recipes
on Microsoft was not easy. I am not good with computers and struggled trying to figure
out how to format it. Although at first I debated on whether or not to publish my
cookbook online using websites such as lulu.com, they usually cost a lot more money and
very difficult to understand. So I stuck with Microsoft. The process of typing, editing,
and revising were very time consuming and difficult. It took me hours on the computer to
fix all my errors. I had many people such as my mother, sister, and Ms. Carnes look at it
before I went to get it finalized and printed. During the process of me making my
cookbook, I would also invite my grandmother over to teach me to cook her recipes. She
came over several times and each time we cooked something new. Our first meeting I
was able to learn how to cook her famous German potato pancakes. Once I knew how to
do it, I would practice cooking the recipes when she wasn’t around. I cooked some for
my brother since those were his favorite. Over the course of several months, I learned to
cook her sweet potato casserole, marinated Salad, potato salad, apple pie, Beef Rouladen,
pork dish, cranberry salad, cucumber salad, and pecan pie.

5. Through this whole process, I learned a lot about cooking. I learned that you
could substitute many different ingredients. Many times when I was making a recipe and
we didn’t have an ingredient or we didn’t have enough of an ingredient. I learned from
my mother that many things could be substituted without even noticing the different taste.
I also learned that you don’t always have to be accurate. My mother and grandmother
both taught me that I don’t always have to follow a recipe to the exact measure that it
calls for. Sometimes, it can end up tasting better when you experiment to see what you
like the most. One of the major things I learned was that practice makes perfect. The only
way I was able to become a better cook was to mess up and learn from those mistakes.
Another thing I learned was to never give up. Many times through the process of cooking
the foods I would burn them, or completely mess up the recipe. Sometimes I even burned
myself. It was definitely a huge frustration for me at some points. However, I had to
endure through the frustration because after all it was just a learning experience. Reading
about the effects of poor nutrition also encouraged me to better my diet and decreased my
desire to eat fast food. I was able to share my findings with my family members and
friends. I will continue to peruse this topic and improve my cooking skills so one day
when I am a mother, my children will be able to enjoy the same home cooked meals that
I had growing up.
I learned thought this whole process that I can pick up a new skill pretty quick. It
was pretty easy for me to remember most of the recipes. Thank you for your time! Are
there any questions?