[Previous entry: "FCCLA students earn top awards, qualify for state STAR contest"]
[Next entry: "Crofton area educator writes book on youth and self-esteem"]

01/24/2007: "New alumni officers create school lunch cookbook; offer it for sale"

Somethin’ good is cookin’ in the Crofton Alumni Association!
You may recall, back in the weeks following the last Crofton Alumni Association’s annual reunion, in July, there were articles in the paper about the fact that three of the four longstanding officers of the alumni group had stepped down; and no one had stepped up to fill the vacant positions.
Then, late in July, three classmates decided they didn’t want to see the association just fall by the wayside, so they volunteerd and took over as officers. The three new officers are all from the class of 1996. They are Diane Schieffer of Fremont, and Kevin Halle of Wayne, who will be co-chairs, Jesica Merkel of St. Helena, secretary. They join Peg Schieffer, who remains as the association’s treasurer.

“We officers have been in touch by phone and through emails, trying to come up with fundraising and promotion ideas, to get more attendance for the banquet,” said Merkel, who just recently moved back to her home area with her husband, CHS alum Matt Merkel, and their children.
The trio wanted to enlarge the bank account of the association, and after some brainstorming, they came up with the idea of creating a cookbook filled with recipes from school lunch.
“We have great memories of the hot, homemade lunches served to us while attending Crofton Public/Community School,” Merkel relayed, “and in talking to other former students, we found that there were certain recipes they would have loved to get their hands on.”
Jesica wrote letters to some of the former Crofton school cooks, asking for help getting the recipes. “Maxine Kollars had all the recipes we needed and soon others responded and mailed copies of them,” Merkel recalled.
But no project comes off withoiut a fee glitches and hitches, and the Alumni Association officers ran into their first obstacle. The recipes the various cooks provided were made to feed hundreds! They were still calling for large quantities of ingredients to feed the Crofton students -- not a family or small group.
So Jesica began the task of trying to “trim” the recipes down to manageable parts. “Unfortunately, my math skills were not up to the task,” Jesica confessed. But her pharmacist husband, who now works at Avera Sacred Heart Hospital, found a recipe converter online and that was used to scale down the recipes into family-friendly portions.
“Diane took over from there,’ Jesica recalled, “ putting the book together, designing the cover, adding clip art and fun facts. She did a wonderful job and the finished product is something that we are all proud of.”
The cookbooks made their debut about a month before Christmas, and the officers advertised them in the Journal.
“Sales were good over the holidays but have since slowed down,” Jesica noted. “This is really a fun book, even if you aren’t an avid cook. The recipes are simple and the book is filled with little tidbits of information, for nostalgia’s sake, that are sure to stir up great memories from our school days.”
The books are being marketed locally through the generous support of three Crofton businesses. Village Variety & Dollars, people’s Grocery and Farmers & Merchants State Bank agreed to have the cookbooks on sale at their locations. All proceeds from the sale of the cookbooks are going to the Crofton Alumni Association.
If you can’t get to Crofton to buy a book, you can contact Diane at (402) 620-0841 or Jesica at (402) 357-2597 to have a copy mailed to you.
This is the kind of shot of enthusiasm the Alumni Association needed once former officers Eva Wiebelhaus, Jeff Donner and JoAnn Wiebelhaus stepped down. This trio of ‘96ers will certainly add their youthful touch to the organization as well as the details of the annual alumni banquet.
But the association still needs your support ... financial. So whether you liked such menu items as haystacks or school lunch chili, do your part and order a copy of the cookbook. For $8, it’s a treasure no Crofton High graduate should be without.