Re: Community House Kitchens
From: Elizabeth Stevenson (tamgoddesscomcast.net)
Date: Mon, 1 Dec 2003 12:13:12 -0700 (MST)
I have to say, I'm stunned that your community puts up with this. It points
out things I have taken for granted in our own kitchen and how it runs.

One person to run the kitchen will not be enough. It's a huge job. We have a
committee that runs the commonhouse, including the kitchen. We are in charge
of making sure there are supplies and getting things repaired and replaced.
If there is something needed, you can tell a committee member. There is a
list of staples that we keep stocked on the refrigerator. I happen to be one
of the two people who are doing that job at the moment. If I see that
something has run out, I buy it the next time I go to the store.

We have two stoves with ovens, and rarely cook anything at home, unless it's
just more convenient that way. One stove is a high-BTU "commercial style"
residential stove. Two quiet residential dishwashers are enough to get the
job done, and we have two separate sink areas, one with a deep double sink
for dishwashing and one for vegetable prep. After meals, both are used for
washing pots and pans if necessary. All dirty linens, including cloth
napkins, tablecloths, aprons and potholders, go into a bucket that is easily
transported to the laundry a few feet away. One of our jobs is washing,
drying and putting away the common house laundry. This is a regular job like
mowing the lawn or making sure the trash enclosure is clean. We choose jobs
on a six-or-so month basis, and everyone is required to have one.

Potlucks must have a sponsor, so that everything gets coordinated and
cleaned up afterwards. The sponsor doesn't have to do all the work, just
make sure that someone does.

There is another point that I feel I need to make (again), so sorry to
old-timers for having to read it once again: If everyone is required to
cook, things work a whole lot better in the common meal department. People
simply won't put up with a kitchen that doesn't work, and much more energy
goes into meals when everyone feels that they are doing their fair share. I
simply can't understand why people would do all the work it takes to build
cohousing and then decide not to make common meals, and the kitchen, a high
priority. 

Be prepared, everyone. From now on, if I disagree with someone about what is
necessary in the kitchen or at common meals, I'm gonna ask how often they
actually use it! ;o)

One more thing, and then off the soapbox I go: running a kitchen, as Sharon
pointed out with the example of her Aunt, is not a minor task. This is also
traditional women's work. Would you run other aspects of your community like
this? Would you ignore the fact that the lawnmower or snowblower is never
maintained or have a workshop with no tools? Would you leave the accounting
undone because nobody feels like it? I would encourage groups to look at
their attitudes towards various tasks in cohousing that need to get done
that aren't, and see if there isn't some attitude about that work that needs
to be confronted or changed. Just an idea, not making any judgements.

-- 
Liz Stevenson
Southside Park Cohousing
Sacramento, California
tamgoddess [at] comcast.net


> From: Sharon Villines <sharon [at] sharonvillines.com>
> Reply-To: cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org
> Date: Mon, 1 Dec 2003 10:35:33 -0500
> To: cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org
> Subject: Re: [C-L]_Community House Kitchens
> 
> 
> 
> On Nov 27, 2003, at 1:31 AM, Berrins [at] aol.com wrote:
> 
>> We have a six burner stove and seldom, if ever, use them all at once.
>> However, we need the space a six-burner stove provides for the very
>> large pots we
>> frequently use.  That said, we often have four burners going at once,
>> occasionally five and it's possible we've used all six at once.
> 
> Has anyone investigated the possibility of putting in individual
> burners so they can be spaced far apart enough to actually use? We also
> just bought a new 5 burner range top (we have separate ovens) but only
> 2-3 of the burners are realistically usable because they are so close
> together and the pots are so big. People cooking smaller amounts tend
> to use their stoves at home.
> 
> I don't do a lot of cooking (or eating) in the commonhouse but I took
> charge of the turkey for Thanksgiving. It gave me a good opportunity to
> see how the kitchen works -- very differently than I had imagined.
> Basically people do a lot of compensating with their own kitchens.
> There is no kitchen laundry, for example, to put pot holders into that
> need washing. They just seem to get put away dirty. Towels are taken
> home to wash so when I came in to serve soup that I had made from the
> turkey bones on Saturday, the towels were still gone -- home being
> washed. I had to cover the hot rolls with another pan instead of a
> towel that would have allowed them to breath.  I arrived to cook a 23
> pound turkey, dressing, and giblet gravy in a kitchen with no pepper,
> no plastic wrap, no aluminum foil, When I asked about various ways of
> doing things people would say I do it at home. I went back to my unit a
> million times to get stuff that I had expected to be in the kitchen.
> And a the last  minute there were too many cooks in the kitchen, no
> room in the ovens, and no room on the stove top for all the dishes that
> were brought for the pot luck because there had been no coordination of
> who was cooking where, when.
> 
> My conclusion from this experience -- the kitchen needs to be not only
> well designed but well managed. If cooks can't work there easily with
> all the basic stuffs present, they cook at home which means the
> commonhouse won't smell like the hearth we expected it to smell like
> when we planned an open kitchen. How you manage is probably more
> important than having the exactly right appliances.
> 
> I once had an aunt with 14 children. All she ever did was sit at the
> kitchen table, drink coffee, and talk to the children who were doing
> the work. My mother thought she was lazy. I now realize she was very
> smart. She was keeping order by directing traffic and observing what
> needed to be done next.
> 
> Early on, if you expect to have an active meal program, begin looking
> for a kitchen manager and give them the funds and the authority to keep
> the kitchen stocked and well managed.
> 
> Sharon
> -----
> Sharon Villines
> Takoma Village Cohousing, Washington DC
> http://www.takomavillage.org
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Cohousing-L mailing list
> Cohousing-L [at] cohousing.org  Unsubscribe  and other info:
> http://www.cohousing.org/cohousing-L

_______________________________________________
Cohousing-L mailing list
Cohousing-L [at] cohousing.org  Unsubscribe  and other info:
http://www.cohousing.org/cohousing-L

Results generated by Tiger Technologies Web hosting using MHonArc.