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International Students Cook Ethnic Lunches for All
Newswise — It can get very cold at Michigan Technological University, on the snowy Upper Peninsula of Michigan. And the food tends to be blandly American. So a group of enterprising international students--with the help of the University's Dining Services--are cooking the cuisine of their countries for lunch every Friday.
The project is called Khana Khazana, which means "food treasure" in Hindi. And they're not just cooking comfort food for the large numbers of international students who flock to Michigan Tech for its engineering, technology and science programs. Khana Khazana features the food of a different country every Friday, and it's open to all--the campus and the community.
International students cook and serve the weekly international lunches, which have featured dishes from India, China, Iran, Thailand, Turkey, Finland and many other countries. On Feb. 3, 2012, Khana Khazana's second birthday, the meal included foods from seven different nations.
Served at the Food Court--the campus cafeteria--in Michigan Tech's Memorial Union Building, a full Khana Khazana lunch sell for $6 and includes two or three entrees, a vegetarian alternative, dessert and a free beverage. Three times, the proceeds from the lunches have gone to benefit disaster-torn nations: Haiti after its earthquake, flood-ravaged Pakistan and Japan after the earthquake and tsunami that caused such devastation.
An Indian undergraduate named Sahil Thakkar spearheaded Khana Khazana. Thakkar, who was working in the Dining Services kitchen part time as a dishwasher, simply cornered executive chef Eric Karvonen and retail dining manager Matt Lean and informed them that both campus and community were hungering for food cooked by international students.
"He was so enthusiastic and so sure he could make it work that we decided to let him give it a try," says Lean.
Judging by the long lines at Khana Khazana's booth in Michigan Tech's Food Court each Friday lunchtime--and the fact that the Khana Khazanans almost always run out of food before their 1 pm closing time--Thakkar and his fellow international students were right.
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