All manner of goods for cooking and baking sit on the FRC shelves: flour, dried beans, oil, butter, sugar and more. In fact, there are four different types of flour to choose from. There has also been a recent expansion of culturally appropriate foods being offered in the center.

“I would love to see students use more of our dried beans! It’s an underutilized resource,” said FRC worker and sophomore Kayden Rinzel. 

Not all students are the best in the kitchen, or some simply want to expand their recipe list, which is why the FRC and the Feed Your Brain Campaign (FYB) partnered with student organizations to present cooking lessons online. 

“It’s a no-risk situation and there are lots of benefits to experimenting with what we have,” Rinzel said.

The first cooking event to take place was with Fusion, a student organization focused on providing a community for transracial adoptees and multiracial students, as well as creating dialogues on race and other intersecting identities. For their cooking event, they made a rigatoni pasta dish.

“We are all able to have those discussions,” said President of Fusion and senior Grace Ryan. “Fusion is open to literally anyone who wants to join.”  

On Friday, Nov. 13, HIPS partnered with the FRC and the FYB campaign to teach students how to make fry bread over Google Meets and Instagram Live. The ingredients needed were  flour, sugar, two yeast packets, some salt, oil, dry milk, butter and water. 

The history of fry bread was explained in context with the oppression of Indigenous populations. In 1864, the Navajo were forced by the U.S. government to relocate, making it impossible to rely on their traditional food systems. The government provided them with only basic ingredients for cooking and so the Navajo created fry bread on their long journey. Some view fry bread as a food of oppression while others view it as a beautiful symbol of Indigenous resilience.

HIPS President and sophomore Emily Mckenzie, along with Treasurer and sophomore Myrka Zambrano, spoke about how well the event went. Mckenzie mentioned that HIPS is planning on creating a recipe book for students. Zambrano noted how easy the collaboration was and that the university was very willing to help. Make sure to check out the instagram pages for the organizations mentioned to see updates on future events: FRC at @hufoodaccess, FYB at @feedyourbrainhu, Fusion at @hu.fusion and HIPS at @hu_hips.