Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Shared meals

[David Heimann (heimann]

Hello Fellow Diners,

	At Jamaica Plain Cohousing we suspended common meals once COVID 
started until about a year ago.  We now have a common meal once a week 
on Monday, and it is well subscribed (the cook teams have self-organized 
and there are around 4-5 of them, though getting people to clean up 
remains an ad hoc effort that usually succeeds.

	The menus are generally either vegetarian/vegan or a choice 
between meat and vegetarian/vegan.  The sign-up sheet shows any 
allergies or preferences for any particular resident, with the cook team 
having the option to take those into account or not and the affected 
residents having the option whether to sign up or not (the cook team may 
mention if some of their menu has a conflict with some of the 
allergies).

	Payment is taken care of by having costs of the meals added to a 
resident's monthly condo bill.

        The whole thing is working.

Regards,
David Heimann
JP Cohousing


> Message: 1
> Date: Sun, 19 Mar 2023 08:03:14 -0600
> From: Sandy Thomson <sandykthomson [at] gmail.com>
> To: cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org
> Subject: [C-L]_ Shared meals
> Message-ID: <DBA50EB4-8739-4CD1-B3E6-B77E1D04788E [at] gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
>
> One thing I have wondered is if the lack of common meals during Covid decreased 
> the closeness of people and thus the desire to spend time with other community 
> members thus resulting in less people wanting to participate in common meals.  
> Kind of vicious circle.
> I am very interested in this topic because I think common meals are so 
> important to the success of a community.  We are really trying to up our 
> commitment to fun in our community and hope this spills over into the common 
> meals.
> Sandy