Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Meals [was Common house design

[R Philip Dowds (rpdowds]

Cornerstone does the buffet thing, and I see it as producing long lines and 
some messy crowding and cross-reaching.  I don’t find that it is a good way to 
start a meal.

I think the family-style pass-the-food system can work well if (a) tables are 
small, like six people, and (b) you have a menu and serving ware coordinated 
for pass-the-food.  For instance, small-table pass-the-food may not deal well 
with meat v vegetarian entrees — not unless you dictate which tables are for 
omnivores, and which for vegetarians.  To successfully differentiate, maybe 
it’s back to the buffet for the entree.

RPD

> On May 26, 2015, at 11:33 AM, Sharon Villines <sharon [at] 
> sharonvillines.com> wrote:
> 
> Unless there are waiters—which makes a big difference--I’m a fan of buffet 
> dining. When I discovered that families do it at home, I thought I had died 
> and gone to heaven. I don’t understand at all why people would want to pass 
> bowls along a table of 30 people as they have done here at Thanksgiving and 
> Christmas for a number of years. Or even try to make room on the table for 
> all the bowls.
> 
> In cohousing, another advantage of buffet service is that it is easier to put 
> a card with the ingredients by the serving dish. Sitting in a 
> pass-the-food-setting I once took something that looked liked mashed potatoes 
> and turned out to be something horrible. I never figured out what it was. I 
> was embarrassed not to eat it because I didn’t know who brought it. We had a 
> number of guests that holiday. Another time I took mixed vegetables to find 
> that them mixed with what I later found out was plum jelly. It can be 
> hazardous.
>