By Ryan Meehan
Beth Wolfson jokes that the highlight of her life is being covered in thick, light-green slime at Nickelodeon Studios when she was about 8-years-old. The 22-year-old journalism major at Boston University can still recall the peculiar apple taste of the slime, but she prefers the taste of a freshly baked cake to slime any day.
“I can bake any kind of cake from scratch. German chocolate, red velvet, banana rum – anything,” she says. “Everyone teases me that I’m like their mother.”
Raised in Northbrook, Ill., Wolfson had to learn to cook on her own. When she would tell her mother she was hungry, she was told to make the food herself. Her father cooks eggs, nothing else.
“We’re happy to be her guinea pigs,” said her father, Jeff Wolfson, 55, who is a fan of a good home-cooked meal.
When she visits her boyfriend, Jason Mayer, 22, who is a member of the Theta Chi fraternity at Miami University in Ohio, she always brings baked goods. By the end of the weekend, the food is gone, he said.
“She’s really innovative," said Mayer. "This weekend she brought me cookies and muffins; beats the hell out of eating my mom’s cooking.”
Last fall, Wolfson held a volunteer after-school teaching position at William Barton Rogers Middle School in Hyde Park, Mass., where she passed her recipes on to a class of sixth and seventh graders. Her team leader, Monica Hayden, 22, of Winchester, Mass., said Wolfson once brought in a smoothie recipe and encouraged the students to mix their favorite ingredients to make their own.
“I definitely learned a lot from her,” Hayden said. “I even use her recipes.”
Wolfson’s desire to work with children began while studying in Australia a year earlier. She saw six countries in five months, inducing culture shock as she traveled to Cambodia, Thailand, and China. She learned about dengue fever and how children were dying because they could not afford a $2 vaccination. The experience opened her eyes to the world, and she now hopes to work with underprivileged kids one day.
“I would love to be able to help people,” she said.
As an economics minor, Wolfson is considering career options. She worries the country will go into a recession, and contemplates how it will affect her aspirations.
“Getting a job after graduation is going to be tough,” she says. “Non-profit [organizations] make cuts because donations are low because of the economic situation.”
She lifts an issue of Cooking Light magazine off of her desk and jokes about her alternative options as a chef.