Everett N.

"Eddie" Souza Park &

Community Garden Virtual Recipe Book
Chrissy Diec, Dan Efroni Rotman, Jonathan Ho, Renae Romandia McCoy
ENGR 110
Fall 2020
Dr. Jessica Kuczenski
December 4, 2020
 Abstract
Over the last ten weeks, our collaborative team, a group of four college students with
various career aspirations, worked together with the Everett N. Souza Community Park and
Garden to bring the members a product that would celebrate their hard work and dedication
whilst being a part of the gardening community. Throughout the planning stages of our project,
our team aspired to center the project around the idea of giving the community members the
opportunity to learn from each other, while also developing their passion for gardening. In order
to achieve these goals in a positive manner, our team settled on the decision to create a virtual
cookbook, which will consist of personal recipes, stories, and gardening tips, all of which will be
provided by the community garden members. In doing so, garden members will be given the
opportunity to build connections with one another, while also expanding their prior knowledge
about both gardening and food preparation. As the development of our cookbook comes to a
close, our hope is that there will be less food waste and community members will be inspired to
grow even more crops in the garden, thus increasing the amount of vegetation on the planet. To
create this book, we used a set of Google Workspace applications and several add-ons to
automate a large portion of the work needed to manually generate a cookbook. In the end, we
were able to deliver a virtual cookbook to our customers as well as a manual for our community
partner to replicate this project in the future.
 Acknowledgments
This fall quarter has been a unique learning experience for us all and we are very grateful
for having the opportunity to work with the Everett N. "Eddie" Souza Community Garden. We
would like to express a special thanks to Dr. JAK for her thorough guidance throughout the class
this quarter. Even though this class was taught virtually, Dr. JAK made sure to provide us with
helpful resources to ensure that we would be able to develop a successful product for our
community partner, and for that, we are grateful.
A huge thank you to Derek Bryant, the Everett N. "Eddie" Souza Community Garden
director for his flexibility, understanding, and support throughout this project. We appreciate all
of the time and effort he put into meeting with us weekly, connecting us to community garden
members, and most importantly directly sharing all of our surveys with the community. We were
able to learn about the purpose of the community garden, develop knowledge around gardening,
and stay connected to the Santa Clara community during these unusual times. These past ten
weeks have been an invaluable learning experience and we are so thankful to have experienced
them.
We want to thank the Everett N. "Eddie" Souza Community Garden members for
contributing to our cookbook. We value the time each individual community garden member
spent filling out our personal recipe and story surveys because each and every one of these
submissions is what made our cookbook possible! Without their assistance, our team would have
never been able to create the project in the vision of the garden community.
Lastly, thank you to our class teaching assistant, Keala Johnson, for providing insightful
feedback on our reflection papers, project portfolios, and project presentations. Without Keala’s
assistance, we would have had no sense of organization. Through her aid, we were able to make
improvements to the way we approached and executed our project, thus allowing us to reach the
final results.
 Table of Contents

Introduction 1
The Everett N. “Eddie” Souza Community Garden 1
Community Partner 1
Problem Statement 1
Motivation and Scope of Project 2
Pandemic Response 2
Critical Customer 2
Roadmap 3

Discussion 3
Project Objective 3
Solutions Development 4
Civic Engagement 4

Results and Analysis 5

Final Product Specifications 5
Budget 7
Implementation and Testing 7

Conclusion and Recommendations 9

Bibliography 10

Appendices 11
 Introduction
The Everett N. “Eddie” Souza Community Garden
The Everett N. "Eddie" Souza Community Garden, which is located in Santa Clara,
California, opened in the summer of 2019 with the intention of being a place in which
community members could go to learn about plant growing techniques and establish connections
with other members of the community. The community garden program offers community
members the opportunity to spend three years learning all there is to know about gardening so
that when their three year period is up, they can leave and pass on their knowledge to others.
With this cycle recurring every three years, the goal is that eventually everyone will know how
to garden and will be able to live a happier, healthier lifestyle.
Community Partner
One aspect about the community that the garden manager, our partner, Derek Bryant,
often mentions is that Santa Clara is an extremely diverse area, filled with people who come
from various backgrounds. Many of the community members who live in Santa Clara grew up in
low-income families, or currently live a lifestyle where they cannot afford many of their
expenses. This is especially prominent in Santa Clara where housing and living expenses are
much higher than average (Santa Clara, CA). Due to these higher expenses, many families tend
to have difficulty saving money for groceries. With these financial issues in mind, Derek made it
his mission to open this community garden to give people the opportunity to save money and
grow their own food. One challenge that our partner faced was that many individuals in the Santa
Clara community grew up in places where they were unable to learn how to garden. To solve this
problem, he decided to make the garden a place where people can learn the basics of growing
their own food, so that they may pass on their knowledge to future generations. In addition to
running the Eddie Souza Garden, our partner also manages his own garden and is planning on
opening up another community garden so that he can improve the skills of many more
individuals in the community.
Problem Statement
The community garden members need an accessible way to contribute, gather, and store
recipes so they can be knowledgeable regarding the diverse food options and recipes that utilize
plants grown within the garden.

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Motivation and Scope of Project
As we progress through the development of our project, we want the recipe book to have
a socioeconomic and cultural impact on the Santa Clara community. With our critical customers
being the diverse garden community, our project caters to those who desire an efficient way to
save money and yearn to partake in a community-based gardening program. Due to the fact that
many garden members are unable to physically participate in gardening or connect with each
other during the pandemic, our goal for this recipe book is to allow garden members to feel
involved within the garden community despite the distance.
In addition to socioeconomic and cultural factors, we aspire for our recipe book to also
have an environmental impact on the community. By creating this book, our team gives the
community members the opportunity to access new ideas for various dishes using the plants that
they have grown in the garden. In doing so, we aim to encourage individuals to develop
self-awareness around reducing their food waste and carbon footprint. The cookbook is
informative for the garden members to take a strong initiative on their gardening journey, while
also positively impacting the environment.
Pandemic Response
Due to the current state of our fluctuating economy, the availability of fresh and
affordable fruits, vegetables, and herbs has decreased. As a result of the global pandemic,
connections are faltering, income is decreasing, and work hours are soaring. These various issues
have a large impact on the well-being of our customers and undermine the purpose of the
community garden. In order to stop these personal connections from faltering and give people
the opportunity to surround themselves with the benefits of gardening, our group is creating a
recipe book to come up with a solution for each of these problems.
Critical Customer
The income levels of our customers are positioned in the low-mid range, resulting in less
access to certain resources like the internet or smart devices. The lack of access to these
resources makes it extremely difficult to stay connected and involved with the garden
community. This is why we are working to foster more connections by seeking out thoughtful
contributions from garden members to include in the recipe book through our surveys. We
organize these submissions and build our cookbook as a portable document format (PDF) to
make it easy and accessible for garden members. Members will be able to access the cookbook

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whenever they want by downloading the PDF to their device or by printing it out. Our hope is
that by having a PDF formatted project, all people, no matter the income level, will be able to
access and add value to the community garden.
Roadmap
The remainder of this report will contain information about our project regarding the
project objectives, project specifications, final solutions, and closing remarks. The project
objective will go into detail on what our team wanted to accomplish, as well as why we wanted
to accomplish those goals. The solutions development will take a closer look at each of our
initial ideas, the challenges that occurred from those ideas, and an analysis of how our team
planned to overcome those challenges. The civic engagement section focuses on the public,
community benefits of our project. The final solutions will give an in-depth overview of how our
team came to our final ideas and implemented them into the project. The closing remarks will
touch on what our team learned from this project as well as any advice we would give to future
teams. For more information to see how our team approached this project, please refer to our
Team Contract, Gantt Chart, and E-Portfolios (See Appendices A, B, C). Our final project
designs and layouts are also attached in the Appendix below (See Appendices D through M).
Discussion
Project Objective
As stated in the Introduction section of our report, a variety of factors have impacted the
functionality and success of the community garden. To combat many of these issues, we
brainstormed many different ideas and ultimately decided to develop a virtual cookbook for the
garden members. To minimize costs and to make it more accessible, we decided to deliver our
product in Portable Document Format (PDF). We decided to split the virtual cookbook into 8
components: Cover, Table of Contents, Acknowledgements, Recipes, Stories, Tips & Tricks, and
Index. We designed an attractive cover page to appeal to members of the community and
encourage them to submit their own recipes and stories in future cookbooks. To help readers find
recipes, we included a table of contents in the front of the book, which allows them to quickly be
directed to the page they desire to view. An acknowledgments page is included to give thanks to
all the community garden members and the director. The major focus of the cookbook is the
recipes that were submitted by the members of the garden community. These recipes come from
a variety of cultures and cater to a wide range of dietary needs. In addition, the recipes also

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promote and bring awareness to fresh and healthy food options that anyone can grow or make by
themselves. In between many of the recipes are stories featuring different members of the
garden. These stories add an extra layer of connection for the reader as they get to learn more
about the other members of this diverse community. We decided to have users submit the content
in these sections to spread the theme of inclusivity and develop a sense of belonging. The
product also includes some gardening tips and tricks so members can continue to learn more
about gardening and healthy eating. At the end of the book, our team included an index where
the reader can look for certain ingredients and find the recipes which contain them.
Solutions Development
When working on the design of the project, it was challenging for our group to come up
with an immediate solution, as our final product would be digital. The issue with a digital project
is evident in that there are no physical constraints on what we can do, causing the decision
making to be difficult with so many possibilities. Our first product design was to create a
website. We knew the project would be made for the garden community in response to the
pandemic, so our team believed that a website blog would help create a stronger bond within the
community. However, there were several issues with this idea. The first issue was that a blog
could become unorganized and would require consistent modifications. To tackle this issue, our
next solution was to create a cookbook for the website. We soon realized that with our limited
budget, there would be issues with the cost of hosting and maintaining the site, especially after
the quarter concluded. In addition, some of our critical customers do not have access to a device
or stable internet. Thus, we concluded that the best design would be to develop a PDF cookbook
and automate the procedure to generate it. We researched and discovered a set of free
applications and add-ons that allowed us to meet our limited budget and time constraints. As a
PDF, the cookbook can be downloaded easily for offline viewing. It can also be easily printed
into physical copies for those without devices. Through this design process, we were able to
figure out the most efficient, comprehensive solution.
Civic Engagement
Throughout the course of the project, our group has been working hard to ensure that our
cookbook plays a large role in improving and benefiting the community. As a nonprofit
organization, our group is based around community service towards the patrons of the
community garden, which is why our team decided to focus our project on the ideas of civil

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engagement. One way in which our cookbook plays a role in civic engagement is through our
focus on sustainability and environmental impact. When communicating with our partner, we
were informed that there is a lot of food waste within the garden, which can play a major role in
food insecurity. Our cookbook addresses the social issue of food insecurity by giving people the
opportunity to learn about cost-efficient ways to eat, which will help lower the hunger index in
Santa Clara. According to a recent report from Santa Clara University’s Leavey School of
Business, the hunger index in Santa Clara is currently 23.4%, which means almost one in five
people are “unable to afford the food that they need” (2019). By creating a collaborative
cookbook containing personal recipes and stories from garden members, we strive to encourage
individuals of all ages and backgrounds to become involved with gardening and growing their
own produce. According to Feeding America​,​ despite high levels of food insecurity within the
youth, “38%” of children in Santa Clara County “are likely ineligible for federal nutrition
programs” (2018). To address this, our cookbook highlights various ways in which garden
members can cook with the produce directly grown from the garden, which will ideally give all
garden and community members ideas on ways to bring food to the table. We also hope that the
cookbook will inspire community members to grow even more food in the garden, thus
increasing the amount of vegetation on the planet and reducing the carbon footprint.
Results and Analysis
Final Product Specifications
● Final Cookbook
○ See Appendix D for the final cookbook cover
○ See Appendix E for the survey flyers
○ See Appendix F for the final cookbook
● Final Templates
○ See Appendix G for the final long recipe template
○ See Appendix H for the final short recipe template
○ See Appendix I for the final story template
○ See Appendix J for the final gardening tips & tricks template
To generate our virtual recipe book, we used a set of Google Workspace tools and
add-ons. First, we used Google Forms to collect responses from our customers. We created a
form to collect all information relevant to the recipes and another form to collect information

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about the garden members and their stories (See Appendices K and L). Next, we created two
spreadsheets using Google Sheets to store the submitted responses for each of the two surveys.
We linked the forms and spreadsheets together so the corresponding spreadsheet was
automatically updated for every response we received. We used Google Spell Checker to fix any
submitted mistakes before we put them into the book. We used the Change Case Add-on to fix
any capitalization mistakes. Once the submissions had been polished, they were ready to be put
into the book. To automate this process, we utilized the Document Studio Add-on which takes
each row in the spreadsheet and inputs the contents of each cell into a species format or layout
called a template.
The best free tool for recipe book formatting was Google Slides, so our team developed
our templates using that application. Since each recipe is of different lengths, we developed two
different recipe templates. The first template is for shorter recipes that could fully fit onto one
page, while the second template is for longer recipes, which were put onto two pages. To
differentiate between these two types of recipes, we used spreadsheet functions to calculate the
length of the list of ingredients and the length of the directions. Then, we used filters to only
select the short recipes and run the one-page template. We flipped the filter conditions and only
selected the longer recipes and ran the two-page template. Since all of the stories we received fit
onto one page, we created one template for stories and ran Document Studio on the whole stories
spreadsheet.
In addition to the personal recipes and stories, each member of our team personally
contributed to the tips and tricks pages of the cookbook in order to make the cookbook appear
more garden oriented. The tips and tricks pages highlight gardening suggestions for a
combination of 6 common recipe ingredients. Incorporating this element into the cookbook
allows garden members to continue learning about gardening while searching for a recipe to
cook.
Once we converted all the submissions onto the Google Slides templates, we merged all
of these documents together into one large set of Slides to create our book. We then reordered
the pages and added some finishing touches. The book was then complete and the slides were
able to be downloaded into pdf format and printed, as well as displayed online on websites and
social media. In addition to creating the cookbook, along with all its components, the team also
created a manual for Derek, which contains all the information he would need to know to keep

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this project running for many years to come (See Appendix M). ​The creation of this manual is
beneficial because it will be able to answer any question he might have in the future and help
him expand the project when the time comes.

Budget
When developing our project, the budget was key to decision making, since our team
wanted to spend the least amount of money as possible. In order to keep costs low, the project
was developed using a collection of Google Workspace applications, which are all free of
charge. Our team also made use of various add-ons, which also had the privilege of being free.
The only aspect of the project that might cost money is if someone would like to have a physical
copy of the book. Even though printed copies of the Cookbook are not a part of the final project,
our team created a breakdown of the costs for future reference. (See Appendix N)
Implementation and Testing
Favorite Recipe Survey
The “Favorite Recipe Survey” has been used throughout the course of the project as the
main way in which community garden member’s recipe information is gathered. This Google
Form survey was originally created during week one of the project, but underwent many drafts
and updates before it was ready to be sent out to the public. Our original survey had
approximately six questions: garden member’s contact information, recipe type, recipe name,
ingredients, directions, and comments. After presenting this survey to our partner and receiving
feedback, we developed it into a sixteen question response page.
Analysis
The use of this survey was extremely beneficial to the progression of the project because
it gave us an efficient and simple way to collect information. Through Google Forms, we were
also able to make the transfer of recipe responses into our PDF easier because of the built-in
shortcut within the form, which automatically transfers all of our responses into an Excel Sheet.
Garden Story Survey
Similar to the “Favorite Recipes Survey,” this is also a Google Form survey. The
“Garden Story Survey,” which was sent out to community garden members during week 8 of our
project, has played a large role when it comes to gathering information about the community
member’s personal stories. The stories are implemented into this project to show the community
aspect of the garden. The hope is that, with the implementation of each person’s individual story,

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other members of the community will be able to learn about the lives of the people they interact
with while spending time within the garden.
Analysis
Just like the “Favorite Recipe Survey,” this survey was beneficial because it allowed our
group to collect large amounts of data quickly and efficiently. One important aspect of this
particular survey which makes it very personal is that it gives community members the
opportunity to pick three out of the fifteen questions listed to answer. This aspect is important
because it will allow the story section of the recipe book to have individuality, rather than
uniformity.
Template Development
For the templates, we came across many challenges along the way. A big issue with
creating a good template was the inconsistency of recipe inputs each having different lengths.
We had to run through many templates in order to find the right outline (original prototype
Appendix O), coming out with 2 templates. The first template is for directions consisting of 700
or fewer characters called the “Short Template”. The second template takes care of directions
larger than 700 characters called the “Long Template”. Having only 2 templates allowed for
higher efficiency when trying to automate the whole process.

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 Conclusion and Recommendations
The main objective of our project this quarter was to create a virtual cookbook for the
Everett N. Souza Community Garden members to commemorate all the hard work and value
they bring to the community garden. Given the impact of the pandemic on the community
garden, garden members are currently unable to engage with the community or participate in
workshops to further develop their gardening skills. Our team addressed the lack of community
acknowledgment by encouraging community garden members to participate in surveys where
they could contribute personal recipes and stories to connect with the garden and their peers
amidst the social distancing guidelines. At the start of developing our cookbook, our team had a
goal of collecting 15 personal recipes from garden members. We achieved a total of 23 recipes
along with 4 personal stories and 1 community story from the Priya Living Community. The
main factor we used to determine the success of our project was the amount of engagement we
received from community members. We received more personal recipe and story submissions
than we had anticipated, which we were very appreciative of.
As we approached the final revisions for our cookbook, we identified a few
recommendations to improve the cookbook development process for future students. We
recommend finalizing survey questions far in advance to identify best practices for designing the
cookbook templates. As for the tips and tricks pages, we recommend automating those pages by
gathering information from existing databases or web scraping. Lastly, improving the generation
of the index and automating the entire cookbook by creating a script tailored for automating the
project would help ensure the design process is efficient. All in all, our team managed to
successfully design and develop a virtual cookbook for the Everett N. Souza Community Garden
members to cherish for the years to come.
In addition to the personal recipes and stories, we personally contributed to the tips and
tricks pages of the cookbook. The tips and tricks pages highlight gardening suggestions for a
combination of 6 common recipe ingredients. Incorporating this aspect into the cookbook allows
garden members to continue learning about gardening while searching for a recipe to cook.

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 Bibliography
Data USA.​ Santa Clara, CA​.
https://datausa.io/profile/geo/santa-clara-ca
Document Studio​.
https://workspace.google.com/marketplace/app/document_studio/429444628321
Feeding America. (2018). ​Map the Meal Gap​.
https://map.feedingamerica.org/county/2018/child/california/county/santa-clara
Google. ​Slides Toolbox​. Google Workspace Marketplace.
https://workspace.google.com/marketplace/app/slides_toolbox/994552357682
Lohse, Deborah​. (2019). ​Hunger in Silicon Valley: Improved, but Millions of Meals Still Needed​.
News & Events - Santa Clara University.
https://www.scu.edu/news-and-events/press-releases/2019/december-2019/hunger-in-silic
on-valley-improved-but-millions-of-meals-still-needed.html

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 Appendices
Appendix A: Team Contract
ENGR 110 Team Contract
Goals
- Our product will have a positive impact in our community.
- Our team will strengthen and develop interpersonal, team collaboration, and website design skills
along with learning more about gardening and healthy eating.
Expectations
- We expect everyone to treat everyone with respect (be open to ideas and communicate with
support and honesty).
- We expect everyone to attend as many meetings as possible (be present & actively listen).
- We expect everyone to contribute equal amounts of work.
Policies and Procedures
- Everyone will check Discord daily to stay up to date with updates.
- Everyone will send relevant information into Discord channels for easy search and organization.
- The turnaround time for responses is 24 hours.
- All team documents will be shared in the team folder in Google Drive.
- If there is a 50/50 agreement on a decision to be made, the team will discuss with Derek to make
a decision.
- Each team member has the opportunity of using ​1​ veto to rule out a decision
- If a team member uses veto they must share a concrete reason for their decision in the
next meeting.
Consequences
- We will hold a team meeting to determine the consequences and/or consult Derek or Dr. JAK if
needed.
Signatures:

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Appendix B: Gantt Chart

Appendix C: Team Member E-Portfolios

Chrissy Diec: ​https://chrissyengr110.weebly.com/
Jonathan Ho: ​https://sites.google.com/view/jonathan-ho-efolio
Renae McCoy: ​https://engr110rromandiamccoyproj.weebly.com/
Dan Efroni Rotman: ​https://sites.google.com/scu.edu/danefroniengr110

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Appendix D: Front Cover

Appendix E: Reaching the Community Flyers

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Appendix F: Final Recipe Book
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Cq6jNxG_xFeTeFjjUdCz61W2h0_3saHq/view?usp=sharing\

Appendix G: Final Draft Long Recipe Template

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Appendix H: Final Draft Short Recipe Template

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Appendix I: Story Template

Appendix J: Tips and Tricks Template

Appendix K: Favorite Recipe Google Form

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdi8JocHMftvEFLKVn8jhlE_94ZMG8bwZZVpxK
fM9s-ti7NMw/viewform?usp=sf_link

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Appendix L: Garden Story Google Form
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScmUoe5qTrgXqH7RwmHtVRQapZTTg9Gu7i-ik9
TlNv_YhKJ3g/viewform?usp=sf_link

Appendix M: Manual
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Ry5iFqNPXvatpxPsGc61sdxn_SZuJhhn/view?usp=sharing

Appendix N: Bill of Materials

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Appendix O: First Draft Recipe Templates

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