Students cook up culture at La Casa program

In a room filled with the aroma of baked bread and the soft sounds of traditional Venezuelan acoustic guitar, two young women kneaded dough, much like their ancestors had done for generations in Caracas, Venezuela.\nCooking is a major part of Latin American life and culture, bringing family and friends together, said senior accounting major Kimberly Roberts.\nThe Latino Culture Center, La Casa, held a cooking demonstration Wednesday night to show students how to make arepas, flattened baked bread filled with eggs, tomatoes, onions and ham. The ingredients stuffed inside the bread are collectively termed "perico" and can be compared to Hot Pockets.\nRoberts, one of the facilitators of the cooking demonstration, said cooking is a way to honor the traditions and customs of relatives past.\n"My grandmother always said that if you do not cook with love, the food that you cook will turn out ugly," Roberts said.\nRoberts told students that arepas were very easy to make and could be eaten any time of the day -- breakfast, lunch and even dinner.\nOne of the other cooks, IU alumna Marua Leon, discussed what she hopes students learned about Venezuelan history from the cooking demonstration.\n"When we take arepas out of the oven and do it by hand, it's showing that our ancestors did not have the utensils and even burned their hands to provide food for their families," she said.\nLeon also stressed that she hoped students learned that Latino culture is diverse.\n"Venezuelan culture is different from Mexican, Puerto Rican, Dominican and Cuban culture," she said. "Even if we speak the same language, we are very diverse in customs, traditions and culture."\nMatt Graf, a senior majoring in Informatics, said he was interested in the event because he wanted to learn something new about another culture.\n"I don't know much about Venezuelan cooking, and I want to experience new food from another country," he said.\nMindy Metzcar, a graduate assistant for La Casa, said she hopes to see the participants come back to the center.\n"I hope students learned that La Casa is a welcoming environment and they can learn something new about Latino culture every day of the week," she said.