It’s a tried and true recipe for making new neighbors feel welcome -- invite them to your house for dinner. Some 40 Durham families did just that this fall, hosting about 80 Duke first-year students in their homes.

“It was a great, comforting feeling being in a real house with a cat and two dogs,” said Malika Atmakuri, a first-year student from New York City who recently shared a Southern meal of “chicken pudding” (a recipe from Mama Dips in Chapel Hill), turnip greens, green beans and sweet potato biscuits with Diane Daniel and her husband Wessel Kok in their Walltown home.

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