Cohousing-L Mailing List: Common meals pre-common house

[cjsheehan (cjsheehan]

Here at Sonora Cohousing (Tucson, Arizona) we have got a pretty good
system going (and it only took a good 7 months to get it figured out)
before we have a functional common house -- ours in currently sitting in
a shell like condition waiting for electricity and interior finishing. 
Anyway we call them Eating Circles, we had a big sing up and folks signed
up for day(S) of the week they want to share meals with other households.
 We have eating circles on every night but Sunday, each circle then got
together to hammer out the details of their particular circle.  For
example,  on Monday night we originally had 12 households sign up (22
adults and 18 kids) we decided to split into 2 eating circles because
some of us wanted to eat at 6:00 PM and some later at 6:30 PM.  So now
the Monday 6:00 circle consists of 6 households and each household cooks
for the circle once every 6 weeks (we set up the cooking rotation based
on alpha order).  The assumption with  the eating circle is you cook and
eat.  There is no money involved because you assume that you cook once
but then get to eat other cook's food the next 5 weeks so it balances
out.  And there is no sign up except for the initial, it is nice to
notify a cook if you won't be able to come but no sign up.  So far it is
a smashing success and we tried many other things before this that did
not fly-- like hosting a small common meal with a small fee and sign up. 
We still do community wide potlucks several times a month -- two Sunday
brunches and one Saturday night gathering.  

Jenny Sheehan
Sonora Cohousing where the temperature is already pushing into the 90's,
we are having are final push for completing our landscaping and eagerly
awaiting the completion of our pool and common house (hopefully before
summer is on us).   
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