For students who are tired of frozen microwaveable meals every night and are hoping to channel their inner Bobby Flay, UF’s Culinary Arts Student Union is here.
CASU was officially started in Spring 2013, but this is the club’s first semester being funded by Student Government.
This funding means all CASU events are free of charge for any UF student.
The club is open to all majors, and its members range in skill from beginners to advanced.
“We really do appreciate anybody. Don’t feel like you have to know anything about cooking,” said Camille Jamshidi, a 19-year-old UF Spanish sophomore and multimedia director of CASU.
The organization will be holding a food festival April 2 on Turlington Plaza, where members will serve food to any student who stops by.
CASU’s last cooking class of the semester will be held April 15 with a theme of modern cuisine.
The cooking classes are held on campus at the Aquatic Food Pilot Plant and last less than two hours.
“We want our members to keep coming and reward them by giving them priority when signing up for classes,” Jamshidi said.
Past classes included a Chinese New Year cooking class at the beginning of the semester where they made dumplings, fried milk and a Vietnamese salad.
Brandon Fung, a 19-year-old UF biology major, attended.
“Being a part of CASU helps me meet other people generally interested in cooking,” he wrote in an email.
Students like Alex Valdes, a 21-year-old UF biochemistry junior, said he’d be interested in taking classes offered by the club.
“I’ve recently taken up cooking as a hobby, and these free classes would be much more fruitful for me than watching a YouTube video,” he said.
[A version of this story ran on page 9 on 3/25/2014 under the headline "Cooking club heats up with new funding"]
