Cohousing-L Mailing List: Common Meal Preparation Participation

[Joani Blank (Joani]

> Rob S. wrote:
> > It's a bit unusual to expect every person in a cohousing community to
> > participate in a community meals system, in fact, as far as I  
> > know, its
> > unheard of. Perhaps you should rethink the expectation.

I totally disagree with Rob and expecting everyone to participate in  
cooking is certainly not unheard of.
> Doesn't Doyle St. in Emeryville, CA (where Katie M. & Chuck D. used to
> live) have a requirement that everyone cooks?  My impression is  
> that if a
> group wants to have that expectation

At Doyle Street in Emeryville and Old Oakland/Swan's Market Cohousing  
in Oakland CA every adult is expected (not required to cook. I  
learned about this expectation at the very first meeting I attended  
of the Doyle St. Community and that was just a couple of months  
before move-in.  The participation agreement I was shown included the  
signer's agreement to participation in the preparation of common  
meals, in addition to--and separate from--an agreement to "do my  
share" in both the management and maintenance of the community that  
was also in the agreement.

In the case of Swan's Market, newcomers were told at the very first  
orientation meeting they attended, when we were a tiny core group of  
3 households (four adults), that everyone would be expected to cook a  
common meal with one other person once every five weeks or so.  
Occasionally, a newcomer said, "but I can't cook!" "Not to worry," we  
said, "we'll team you up with someone who can the first few times and  
you'll be surprised how quickly you get the hang of it."

 Anyway, there are so many parts of the "cooking" experience that  
require no experience: grocery shopping, slicing bread or cutting up  
fruits and vegetables, assembling the salad, setting the tables,  
serving the meal, stirring pots of stuff, taking things in and out of  
ovens, loading the dishwasher, other clean-up.

In both communities the same team does everything from menu planning  
through cleaning. Even with the work split between two people it can  
be a long afternoon/evening, but then each person can eat up to 13  
meals--at three a week--without doing a stitch of work. At Swan's we  
typically have between 18 and 26 people signing up to eat. In neither  
community has anyone complained about having to cook, nor has anyone  
refused to or chosen not to participate.

Tree says further:

> they had better put it in place early in their development--by the  
> time they have 3/4 of the future members coming to meetings it's  
> too late to get everyone to agree to it.

To my way of thinking anytime after the very first meeting a newbie  
attends is "too late" to raise up this expectation.  The way the  
common meal system is to be structured, should be worked out in a  
general way by the milestone she's mentioned, that's for sure, but no  
time is too early to state the expectation that everyone will  
participate in common meal preparation.

Some of the readers of this listserve have read the article I wrote  
about common meals several years ago for Cohousing when it was a  
print magazine. I took a look at the common meal systems of 26  
cohousing communities. If you have not read it and would like to, you  
can find it posted on www.cohousing.org  at http://www.cohousing.org/ 
livingincoho_meals.aspx

Joani Blank
Swan's Market Cohousing
Oakland California

......except that I'm on my way to North Carolina to stay for a  
couple of weeks in Solterra Cohousing and to work on conference  
planning (I'm co-coordinator and hope we'll see all of you there!).  
I'm exchanging homes and cars with a couple who live there and who  
are already settled in my place in California keeping my little dog  
and themselves happy.