We all know the saying you are what you eat.

Well, if that's the case, the food we prepare and enjoy can tell us a lot about each other.

A bowling Green woman is using the cuisine of foreign countries to help people learn more about other cultures and ethnicities.

Our Laura Rogers joined a class at the food school.

If you pick something that's.

Kind of as the child of missionary parents growing up in Thailand, and a coca did pick up some of the language.

I say I can speak Restaurant Thai to just enough to impress my friends at Thai restaurants.

She made that comment as friends were brainstorming career ideas for Kalika, who taught high school for ten years.

And then someone says, well, what if you taught restaurant Thai?

What if it's a class called Restaurant Thai where you learn to cook some Thai food?

You learn a few Thai words like, wouldn't that be really fun when people do that?

People actually want to take a class like that.

Would people buy tickets for that?

Turns out they would, and they do.

People found us on Facebook and bought full price tickets like the first class.

That was in September of 2024 when the food school was bought.

That first class has now led to several, all of them focused on food from other countries.

The house we live in now, one neighbor is Bosnian and the other neighbors Mexican.

Both of them are phenomenal cooks.

Ana Kalika and her family moved to Bowling Green from California.

They were pleasantly surprised by the city's diversity.

Bowling green is so small, relatively speaking, that you're still going to bump into each other.

That Asian grocery store that I love is right next to the middle school, where my friend's kid goes.

On this day, she's browsing at another international grocer picking up items for an Iraqi cooking class.

What we're teaching is more cultural exposure than it is culinary skills.

It starts with a food partner, someone who conceptualizes the ingredients and recipe for the class based on simple, home cooked meals.

Every menu that we offer has a real person behind it.

A person who lives in Bowling Green and has a cultural background in this other cuisine.

Pomegranates and coca works with a partner and on her own to perfect the recipe, then shares it with her food school class.

As long as you get it, it's just so beautiful to me how we meet these food partners.

They just kind of come up out of the woodwork.

People hear what we're doing and want to be part of it.

I have an Indian food partner.

I have a Venezuelan food partner, a Cuban.

Tonight's class is making the Iraqi dish of onion.

What's easy?

Accessible, casual.

Normal food.

What would you feed your family on Tuesday night?

Let's make that the food.

School has also introduced its instructor to New foods and recipes.

Got to use ingredients I have never played before.

I'd never heard of pomegranate molasses before and it is so good and it's accessible right down the street.

And now I know what to do with it.

So that's really fun.

Your onions should be.

Soft, she says.

It's also fun to learn the history behind popular dishes, like the origin of tiramisu as a favorite dessert in Ethiopia.

Following Italy's invasion in the 1930s.

The two main things they left behind are the word chow and tiramisu.

Everybody loves tiramisu.

This is the most popular dessert in Ethiopia because of the Italians, and I thought that was hilarious.

I was so interesting.

Like, how does this historical thing influence how people eat.

And potentially how they better understand each other?

We're trying to give people exposure so that they can build relationships and feel comfortable with all kinds of cultures.

Giving us all something to chew on for Kentucky Edition, I'm Laura Rogers.

Thank you Laura, hope you got to sample some of that.

Upcoming classes at the food school include favorite dishes from Brazil, China, Germany and Thailand.