Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Community House Kitchens

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

On Nov 27, 2003, at 1:31 AM, Berrins [at] aol.com wrote:

> We have a six burner stove and seldom, if ever, use them all at once.
> However, we need the space a six-burner stove provides for the very 
> large pots we
> frequently use.  That said, we often have four burners going at once,
> occasionally five and it's possible we've used all six at once.

Has anyone investigated the possibility of putting in individual 
burners so they can be spaced far apart enough to actually use? We also 
just bought a new 5 burner range top (we have separate ovens) but only 
2-3 of the burners are realistically usable because they are so close 
together and the pots are so big. People cooking smaller amounts tend 
to use their stoves at home.

I don't do a lot of cooking (or eating) in the commonhouse but I took 
charge of the turkey for Thanksgiving. It gave me a good opportunity to 
see how the kitchen works -- very differently than I had imagined. 
Basically people do a lot of compensating with their own kitchens. 
There is no kitchen laundry, for example, to put pot holders into that 
need washing. They just seem to get put away dirty. Towels are taken 
home to wash so when I came in to serve soup that I had made from the 
turkey bones on Saturday, the towels were still gone -- home being 
washed. I had to cover the hot rolls with another pan instead of a 
towel that would have allowed them to breath.  I arrived to cook a 23 
pound turkey, dressing, and giblet gravy in a kitchen with no pepper, 
no plastic wrap, no aluminum foil, When i asked about various ways of 
doing things people would say I do it at home. I went back to my unit a 
million times to get stuff that I had expected to be in the kitchen. 
And a the last  minute there were too many cooks in the kitchen, no 
room in the ovens, and no room on the stove top for all the dishes that 
were brought for the pot luck because there had been no coordination of 
who was cooking where, when.

My conclusion from this experience -- the kitchen needs to be not only 
well designed but well managed. If cooks can't work there easily with 
all the basic stuffs present, they cook at home which means the 
commonhouse won't smell like the hearth we expected it to smell like 
when we planned an open kitchen. How you manage is probably more 
important than having the exactly right appliances.

I once had an aunt with 14 children. All she ever did was sit at the 
kitchen table, drink coffee, and talk to the children who were doing 
the work. My mother thought she was lazy. I now realize she was very 
smart. She was keeping order by directing traffic and observing what 
needed to be done next.

Early on, if you expect to have an active meal program, begin looking 
for a kitchen manager and give them the funds and the authority to keep 
the kitchen stocked and well managed.

Sharon
-----
Sharon Villines
Takoma Village Cohousing, Washington DC
http://www.takomavillage.org

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