Re: how many people for common meal...just starting | <– Date –> <– Thread –> |
From: Bonnie Fergusson (fergyb2yahoo.com) | |
Date: Mon, 14 Aug 2006 14:57:12 -0700 (PDT) |
We at Swans Market Cohousing have 20 households and anywhere from 18 to 30 folks at common meals three times a week. We have a clear agreement in the community that every adult cooks once a "rotation"--that is once approximately every 4-5 weeks--in teams of 2. We find that a team of 2 works and a team of 3 is easier (sometimes we have extra help, of varying ages at some meals). I agree that if you use 6 people at each meal everyone will be on duty very often and this will make it seem more burdensome. People worry a lot about all the work to cook for such a large group but in practice we all quickly learn to adapt our recipes for this. Simplify, Simplify, Simplify. The things we cook for common dinner are not exactly the same as what we cook for ourselves at home. Dessert is often fresh fruit (melons, currently) or ice cream, only occasionally a baked thing. A large green salad using mixed green's from the farmers market is pretty much a staple. So only the main dish (s) and or a vegetable really require much prep. As for clean up, everyone puts their own dishes in the dishwasher so the clean up is storing or giving away any leftover food, sweeping the floors, wiping down tables and kitchen prep surfaces, taking down the garbage and the compostables, and starting the dishwashers. Usually the next team to cook, empties the machines of clean dishes and puts them away. The teams themselves decide the menus and who will shop for what. Sometimes one person will cook something ahead and the other will put it in the oven to heat up on the appropriate meal day. This is one of the ways we accomadate difficult work scheduling issues. Also because we only cook about once a month people are generous with their time and quick to jump in to help when things go awry (sickness, work or family emergencies) with the cooking plans. I would say our common meals are very successful and one of the main "glues" in our community building processes. We hire an outside cleaner to do a more thorough common house cleaning (including the kitchen) once every 3 weeks. This was a partial solution to differing standards of required cleanliness. I know that many communities do the separate teams for cooking and cleaning thing but if the same team that cooks cleans up after itself that prevents resentments from building between neater and messier cooks and encourages the cooks to "clean as they go" which works better in my opinion. We also have a "late plate" policy in place which is a little more controversial. If you want common dinner but know you will be late you sign up for a "late plate" and the cooks will fix a plate of food for you and save it so it will be there when you arrive however much later. The controvery swirls around late plates because common meals are supposed to be about community building and if there are too many late plates at any given meal the cooks start feeling less like community builders and more like they are running a restaurant and some resent it. So far everyone has deeply appreciated the option for late plates at sometime or another so we are reluctant to eliminate them. Our current solution is to ask folk to be mindful and not sign up for a late plate if there are already many other late plates signed up so the cooks don't get overburdened. We also ask partners at common meals to make their absent partners late plates from the available food to take the burden off the cooks as much as possible. Good luck in establishing your common meals. They are lots of fun and a great timesaver for most families because of all those days you can just come home and eat without worrying about meal planning, shopping, cooking and clean up. To say nothing of the pleasure of keeping up with your community neighbors' day to day lives. Love, Bonnie Fergusson Swan's Market Cohousing Oakland, CA __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com
- Re: work allocation [was Re: how many people for common meal...just starting], (continued)
- Re: work allocation [was Re: how many people for common meal...just starting] R.P. Aditya, August 10 2006
- Service to your community vs work Rob Sandelin, August 10 2006
- Re: work allocation Racheli Gai, August 10 2006
-
Re: how many people for common meal...just starting R.P. Aditya, August 10 2006
- Re: how many people for common meal...just starting Craig Ragland, August 10 2006
Results generated by Tiger Technologies Web hosting using MHonArc.