Diversity of Food at the University of Illinois Springfield

Diversity of Food at the University of Illinois Springfield
by: Remel Hoskins

The Indian student population continues to increase at the university of Illinois Springfield and so does the food.

Many of the universities Indian residents cook their traditional meals from their homeland. Most of them cook and eat communally, learning recipes from their families or from the internet. Cooking the traditional foods is a way many Indians students feel at home despite being thousands of miles away.

Swati Singh is a graduate student at the university and explains one of her home cooked meals, "We call it chole’ but its made of chic peas with uh onions, tomatoes, spices like cumin, turmeric, and we cook it toss it and we give it a boil with water so its kind of spicy tangy liquid sort of thing."

Springfield’s only Indian Store provides the students with the ingredients they need to cook their homestyle meals. It is also an extremely cost effective for them to cook food as opposed to buying fast food or food on campus.