Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Meals program

[Thomas Chapel (tjchapel]

If you can find enuf people to create meal teams that sounds like a great
solution. If not then maybe consider:
- intentionally altering the schedule betw meals n potlucks
-  or some nights have the cook do just a big entree like spahetti or chili
or casseeole and have others potluck the sides n desserts

If you havent already then ask cooks why theyre not stepping up. Could be
lots of things like
- they lose too much money on food costs vs meal price?
- they find cooking AND cleaning too daunting?
- meal time?
- one over acheiver cook team is setting bar too high for others?

Good luck. I am one of the main cooks in our community and love doing it
but am def an "over acheiver". Ha. In early days we had several people who
liked to cook but as folks have come n gone the number of peopls who want
to fill chore hours thru cooking has diminished.

Tom Chapel

On Tue, Jun 16, 2026, 7:18 AM Marcia Zuckerman via Cohousing-L <
cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org> wrote:

> Bay State Cohousing moved in 3.5 years ago, and started our meals program
> with a meal scheduled every eight days.  Head cooks, assistant cooks, and
> cleaners all signed up on the Gather program.  At the beginning, every meal
> was offered; there were many people eager to be cooks.  Now only about half
> the scheduled meal dates actually get filled with a team.  Sometimes we use
> those times for potlucks, sometimes nothing happens.
>
> We’re considering a plan to create standing meals teams with everyone in
> the community who wants to participate.  A team would be assigned to each
> date.  The teams would be big enough so that there would be people to lead,
> assist, and clean.
>
> I’d like to hear from people who run meals this way, or perhaps have other
> ways to get people to cook.  Many of us would like to eat together weekly
> and are sad that it’s not happening.  As a stopgap, we’ve decided that
> unfilled meal dates will be Bring Your Own Dinner for anyone who wants to
> eat together.
>
> A few specific questions:  how big are the teams? what about people who
> want to eat occasionally; is there some way they can participate? do you
> have a set of recipes that are easy to make for large groups?
>
> Thank you,
> Marcia Zuckerman
> Bay State Cohousing
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