The global pandemic may have cancelled Orange East Public School’s annual market fundraiser, but that hasn’t stopped the school community from coming together to produce a special memento of a challenging year — a school community cookbook

“This year has been like nothing I've ever seen in education,” said Orange East Public School Principal Glen Bourke.

“Our nature is to open the gates and have people inside the school — that has been our goal for so long, to have it become a real focal point for our community — and so to have to turn around and say ‘please stop at the gates’ is contrary to the deep culture of our school.”

With the school’s popular market day unable to proceed, the P&C went looking for another way to raise money for their school.

“And we came up with the idea of a cookbook everyone was cooking during lockdown. We’d talked about a cookbook for years and we saw lots of Instagram feeds of all the wonderful things being cooked and we thought what better time to do it!” said Glen.

“It was a great year to do a cookbook. It is a way for the community to support the school, be represented in the school… a way we could connect with them and also come away with a memento of a pretty unique year — and ultimately raise some money!”

The Community Cookbook has over 200 recipes sent in by parents, community members and students. It also features more the 270 drawings by students from every grade.

“It is also special that every student has got an artwork in there and Year 5 and 6 have a recipe in there. So it is a representation of the school as it is now,” said Glen, who reckons the cookbook with become a much treasured family keepsake.

“I just think these things will last in the community for years, that's my hope. In half a century's time someone is still going to be looking at it and remembering back to this time!”

 It’s not the first cookbook Orange Public School has produced and the last one — published 43 years ago! — has indeed become a treasured item.

“My mum's one, she won't even let it out of her sight because she loves it so much!” said Orange East Public School P&C President Amy Quinn.

Amy’s mother was actually part of the ‘Mother’s Club’ that put the cookbook together, so to be part of the new book was something special.

“There is a really cool history about the cookbook, because it was all typed out on typewriters and then they used a gestetner to print it, Mum said she spent every afternoon sitting there turning the wheel,” said Amy.

“There is a photo of it in the back of the new cookbook, just of one of the pages that is very well-loved, but we just thought that was really cool and that's what made it special to me.”

Collating the hundred of recipes and putting it all together for printing has been a huge job for the P&C, but one that it greatly appreciated, said Glen.

“We are very lucky, the P&C here is huge…. I was talking to every class about how our new LED interactive whiteboards, we've got a brand new netball court, we've got a student cooking facility, play equipment — all sorts of stuff that over the years the P&C work has funded significant proportions of,” he said.

 “This cookbook, I think it is something that people will enjoy and we will sell for years to come!

The Orange East Public School Community Cookbook is $22 for a colour copy or $15 for a black and white copy. To put in an order, you can contact the school office on 63627464.