One little cookie cutter holds a lot of memories for Olivia Pryor.
The Queensbury High School junior used to bake cookies with her mother and grandmother every year at Christmastime. But the tradition stopped for a few years after her grandmother passed away.
Olivia brought a gingerbread-shaped cookie cutter to school this fall and penned a personal narrative about her family’s cookie-baking tradition for her English 11 Regents class.
“Although baking with my grandma was a time of true happiness, I had never realized I was purely happy until she was gone, and the moments were over,” Olivia wrote. “My relationship with my mom may not be the same as with my grandma, but I see my grandma in her everyday, and every Christmas season.”
Olivia’s narrative became part of a new Literary Cookbook, which combined the writing of Kerri Bundy’s English 11R class with the photography of Amanda Bengle’s Photo I class. Each writer was paired up with a photographer.
“Everyone has a food story or a recipe memory or something meaningful in the mundane or the extraordinary,” Bundy said. “Sometimes it’s just going to a drive thru with your friends or it could be an old family recipe.”
Bundy’s students wrote their stories and then shared them with the photography students.
Bundy’s students then brought in food items or recipe cards or cookie cutters to be photographed to help illustrate the story.
One student brought in a full brisket and another student brought in buffalo chicken dip.
Emeri Bartlett wrote about baking her family’s blueberry muffins.
“I wrote about how my mom always wanted me to cook and be independent,” Emeri said, “so it definitely taught me how important it is to cook and how not to give up.”
When she finished, she felt like she had accomplished something, which elevated her self-worth, she said.
“Like any personal memoir, I really wanted them to experience the process of inward reflection, but then to bring something to creation,” Bundy said. “I really wanted them to feel proud of seeing their work in a publication, especially a collaborative project with their photo peers. So that was really fun to see how art and photography and writing complement each other.”
Bengle’s freshman photography students learned how to arrange food to be photographed. They studied composition, the Bokeh effect and learned beginning camera skills. Some students incorporated fast shutter to get frozen motion photos.
“We wanted to learn how to make people look at food in a new way, like fine art,” Bengle said.
The school helped fund the printing of the literary cookbooks. Students who wanted to take a cookbook home were able to “buy” their book by bringing in a Snack Pack donation.
Avery Combs’ photograph of Maya Starr’s chocolate chip cookies became the cover photo for the cookbook. She took the cookies outside on a nice fall day and scattered them on a pink background, going for a Pinterest vibe.
“This was a really fun unit to do,” Avery said, “because after we could eat the cookies.”
But above all else, the 11th grade writing students enjoyed being paired up with and getting to know the ninth grade photographers from Photo I. Avery enjoyed getting to meet and know Maya, her project partner.
“I didn’t know her at first, so I got to know her and we became friends,” she said. “Now we talk a lot.”