Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Common house meal prices

[Beverly Jones Redekop (beverly.jones.redekop]

At Groundswell Cohousing in Yarrow, BC, people commit to a meal rotation
(for example, Tuesday nights). The length of the rotation is based on the
number of adults who sign up. If 20 adults sign up, our rotation will be 11
weeks long. Two adults offer (shop, grow, bake, pay, cook, serve, clean)
one meal. No one pays to eat a meal; we just pay (or grow, barter, etc...)
for the meal we offer to the group (of fellow committed cooks and their
kids).

The extra week is the gratitude meal where parents collectively provide one
more meal to the rotation to say, "Thanks for feeding our kids!" We make it
fancier (homemade sushi or Greek feast or Robbie Burns Scottish) or plainer
(taco bar) depending on our sense of what feels right at the time. We had
two gratitude meals per rotation in a very kid-heavy group until one empty
nester said that one was more than enough gratitude :-)

It's really fun and we give what we have.

The group usually helps the cooks with clean-up. It doesn't feel onerous on
our day to cook. Some of us have favourites we make every time (so the
group eats it every 11 weeks) and some of us like to try new things.