By Ryan Hutchins

Martha Fister
Senior Martha Fister sees the holidays as a special time to bond with family from all over the country as they come visit. Fister began cooking from the time she was a toddler with her mother and father. It soon became a family tradition and still is today.
“Since I can remember, my mom and my dad taught me how to bake since I was really little,” Fister said. “Like we’ve all helped in the kitchen when it was Christmas time and we’re doing our Christmas baking.”
Fister plans on continuing her family tradition when she has a family of her own. She also hopes it will be as memorable a tradition as she remembers it being for her.
“Yeah, I want to teach my little kids how to make that stuff,” Fister said. “It’s really yummy and [holiday baking] was a big part of my childhood, and we still make a really big deal out of it. We have like one day where we just like block it out and we’re all in the kitchen and we fight a lot, but we bake so much stuff. I love that. It’s like my favorite part.”

Shannon Wilson
Culinary teacher Shannon Wilson brings holiday spirit to her classes with holiday baking. This year she decided to incorporate some of her Canadian heritage into her culinary classes by making traditional Naniamo bars.
“They are a layered bar cookie that my mom made every Christmas,” Wilson said. “She got her recipe from her mother, but it is pretty much a staple in British Columbia and Southern Alberta where my parents grew up.”
Wilson grew up with family recipes but as she grew up and traveled she began using international components in her cooking, specifically from Germany and England.
“I have hundreds of recipes that I use,” Wilson said. “I come from a long line of excellent cooks and use my mother and grandmothers recipes. My mother will tell you that I am a more adventurous cook than she is. My husband was in the Air Force and we spent five years in Germany and England. I was greatly influenced by the food there and have been inspired from our travels. I love the tradition that food can bring to a family.”

Jai Strecker
Sophomore Jai Strecker gets inspiration for holiday recipes not from family recipes that have been handed down for generations but instead from a cookbook.
“I use my cookbook probably for most of the things I make and I got it at Barnes and Noble in Kansas City,” Strecker said. “It’s called ‘Baker’s Illustrated.’ We had just gotten the ‘Cook’s Illustrated’ magazine and ‘Baker’s Illustrated’ was like a section of the magazine.”
Her favorite food to make is bread for the simple process to bake it. Among the numerous kinds of bread, the one she likes to make to most is brioche because of its richness and buttery texture. She also plans on continuing this hobby in the future, like Fister, if not for slightly different reasons.
“I really enjoy baking and it’s kind of something that you don’t have to be an academic genius to do, but it still requires skill,” Strecker said.