Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Question about meals

[MartyR707 (MartyR707]

In a message dated 1/9/00 9:16:14 AM, "Jose Marquez" writes:

<< There's another issue...how to know who's coming so you cook enough or not
too much food!  Some of our members who are coming from a smaller cohousing
community have suggested waiting until we move in to deal with this since
we'll all live close to each other at that time.  Other people want to have
the community pretty much ready to live in upon move-in and want to start
researching this and other issues sooner.

I'd love all of your ideas and suggestions!  How have you handled common
meals, what are your favorite large group recipes, did you do more before or
after move in or wish you'd done one or the other, etc! >>

We are pretty new at this here at Two Acre Wood, but here are a few thoughts:

You can easily know how many people are coming to a meal by posting a sign-up 
list in advance - and a deadline to allow for shopping.

Regarding planning the system ahead and being ready to start at move-in, we 
found that to be very unrealistic.  We had a system all planned out in 
advance, but by the time we all moved in, we were so weary and burned out 
from the construction and moving process, that we couldn't think about any 
"systems" right away.  We started with potlucks and then slowly started 
common meals on a volunteer basis - maybe once a week.  Now that it's 4-7 
months since move-in (it was phased), we seem to be having 2 or 3 meals a 
week.  It is still somewhat voluntary, tho.
My advice is to research systems and talk about them ahead of time for two 
reasons - it will help you to be prepared when the time comes, and it's fun 
to think about - keeps the eye on the ball so to speak.  But don't expect to 
be ready to jump right into a system immediately.

We are just this month embarking on a prepay system where everyone pays a 
deposit at beginning of the month and then meals are charged against their 
"account".  I'll let you know how it works.

Marty Roberts
Two Acre Wood, Sebastopol, CA