Home-cooked

Students looking forward to ethnic dishes on table for Spring Break

While some students are looking forward to tropical cruises, exotic beaches and road trips during spring Break, other students are salivating for the simple comforts of home and the long lost taste of ethnic home cooking.

"I can't wait to get home," said Minh Trinh. "I miss my mother cooking Vietnamese food for me."

When Trinh (junior-industrial engineering) was a freshman, she went home to Pittsburgh every two weeks, in part because she missed the ethnic home cooking. Even though she is used to American food now, Trinh said she still yearns for her mother's Vietnamese touch.

"I can't get the seasonings here that I can at home and I don't have a stove," Trinh said. "Vietnamese food is often steamed, baked, boiled and stir-fried and those are things I can't do in the microwave."

Finding the right ethnic seasonings and ingredients is also a problem for Saudi Arabian student Nidal Ayyat, who lives off campus and cooks many of his meals for himself. Most Arab meals require rice, Ayyat (junior-biology) said, but at local grocery stores he can only find Uncle Ben's rice or Spanish rice.

International Market, 328 S. Allen St., offers some of his needed ethnic ingredients, but Ayyat said his cooking still never compares with home cooking. The chick peas that are available in America make his hummus more lumpy, dry and bland, and his favorite dessert, baklava, is never as good here as it is at home. Fortunately, he said, his mother sent him baklava on his last birthday.

However, Ayyat will not experience homemade hummus or baklava this spring break because the plane flight is too long and expensive for him to make the voyage home.

"I definitely get homesick, because I see a majority of people here going home and getting their home cooking," Ayyat said. "I wish I could do that, but I don't have a choice."

Another student who cannot go home for spring break is Pranav Aggarwal, an international student from New Delhi, India. Aggarwal (sophomore-industrial engineering) particularly misses Indian curries, bread and rice, and said the Indian restaurants in town cannot sate his taste for traditional cuisine.

"I do have Indian options in town, but they are restaurant food," Aggarwal said. "They are like eating McDonald's (food) in India and thinking you're eating what Americans eat at home."

Because it is economical and convenient, Aggarwal eats all his meals in the commons, but he said the commons food is monotonously American and rarely includes an Indian dish.

However, Michele Newhard, special projects manager for housing and food services, said the commons attempts to diversify its menu with international nights and ethnic demonstration cooking. She said its main goal is to serve what the majority of students want to eat.

Aggarwal said his anticipation for ethnic home cooking sometimes gets the best of him when he finally gets home.

"It's mad eating. I try and catch up on all the food I have not eaten in the past semester," Aggarwal said. "A lot of times I end up falling sick because I ate too much."