Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: vegetarian & vegan, common meals

[Ian Higginbottom (Ian.Higginbottom]

Mathew Woodbury wrote:
>       Does anyone out there deal with a cohousing group that is part
>vegan or even just vegetarian? How does this work with shared meals.  My
>wife and our 2 year old and I want very much to go into cohousing NOW and
>also want to maintain our high-test fuel consumption. 

About half the members of Cascade Cohousing (Tasmania) are vegetarian.
I am not sure if they are the slight majority or slight minority.  It is 
also the case that some of the founding members were vegetarian.  Non of the
vegetarians object to the cooking of fish or eggs in the common house but some 
are strongly opposed to other meats being stored or cooked in our common house.

We discussed the issue of meals at some length and were able to come to 
consensus on having all common meals as vegetarian meals and on having no meat 
other than fish coooked or stored in the common house.  We had agreement on this
even from those meat eaters who wanted to eat lots of common meals.  I guess
our meat eaters did not feel that eating meat at ever meal was that important
to them while not having meat in the common house was *very* important to some
vegetarians.  There are no vegans in the group and I feel it would have been 
very difficult to have reached agreement on haing only vegan meals.  However
I am sure we could accomodate some meals being vegan.

At the moment (while our common house is being completed) we have only one
common meal per week.  It is very popular and we look forward to having more
after christmas when the common house is complete.

regards
Hig (Ian Higginbottom)