Jake MacLaren has been a student at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops for four years, but this is his second summer helping out at the Baillie House.
“I like the experience,” he said. “Obviously it looks great on a resume, but the main thing is that it’s always interesting to see where people come from, the different areas.”
He said there are always plenty of German and Swiss people who pass through the historic house on Voght Street, but this year there have been a large number of Australians.
This summer, MacLaren, who is doing a bachelor of arts with a major in math and a minor in creative writing, undertook a cookbook project.
He put out a call in the newspaper, television and radio for people in the community to submit their favourite recipes.
Then he organized them — about 30 in all — and compiled them into a cookbook, which the Baillie House is now selling.
There’s more than just cooking instructions in the book, however.
“I went to the museum and found some facts online about Merritt and then put those in there as well,” he said. “So there are little facts in most of the pages as well — little tidbits of trivia about Merritt.”
He also included pictures from old photos of the city to go along with the trivia.
The majority of the recipes are desserts.
“We got plenty of desserts,” said MacLaren. “I tried a few of them as well — some of the people who came through gave us samples of them — all the ones that I tried were excellent.”
