Cohousing-L Mailing List: design of kitchen area

[Stephanie Fassnacht (fassnach]

  First of all, I'd like to thank all who responded to my request for 
recipes/cookbook for large-groups.  The information was very interesting and
will be most useful, if any of us dare cook after all that discussion about 
persons not coming to common dinners because the cooking was so bad!  ;)

  I now have more questions on the same theme.  We are still trying to 
design the common area of our common house, and are trying to get a handle
on the volume of food that makes its way through the kitchen and auxilliary
areas.  We are wondering, for example, how much food storage space we are
going to need.  This would depend on how many people are served per week,
and how often shopping gets done.  What are these figures for your group?
Does your community shop monthly?  weekly?  on a per-meal basis?  some of 
each?  and in what percentage of total consumption (e.g. 50% once a month,
10% once a week?).  How much food does this turn out to be at one time 
(e.g. how many grocery bags, gallons, pounds?).  How does this stuff get 
handled, e.g. is it all stored in the kitchen area?  or is there a hierarchy 
of storage locations with stuff being brought to the kitchen in smaller 
batches?   How big are these areas?  How big is your refrigerator and is 
this the right size?   What things about your kitchen set-up have you found 
to work the best, and the worst?  I've looked in the archives and have read 
the discussion about stoves, commercial hoods etc, but information on some 
of the other areas of kitchen / storage design is not as complete.  
  Wow, I just read this note over, and I'm sure asking a lot!
Any advice you can offer will be most welcome, no matter how much or how
little.

Stephanie Fassnacht
Village Cohousing
Madison, Wisconsin