Our meal sharing system

MoJo, Matt, Steve, Kat, Lee and Maria at one of our shared meals on the front porch.

Since June 2010, we have been trying a new vegetarian meal sharing system. Each of the seven people who live here cooks one night a week. For example, I cook on Thursdays. I head over to the farmers’ market and buy fresh produce, then cook up something super seasonal. Lately it has been pesto. Meals need not be fancy, but depending on who is cooking, they can get quite gourmet. Sometimes there is even dessert.

Our old system was very ad hoc. We shared basic ingredients, but people cooked only when they felt like it. It was totally unpredictable – a crapshoot as to what gets bought or made – but sometimes there were very nice surprises. People coped by eating out a lot, cooking a lot of small meals, and/or hoarding food to make sure they had a backup in case no one made anything or enough. We only have one fridge so it was always packed and the kitchen was frequently crowded with people cooking at overlapping times.

The new structured system is very predictable so we are saving money not having to eat out, spending more quality time eating together, and the fridge is much less cluttered. For anyone who misses a meal, a container is set aside for them. Often there are leftovers, so we may even have food for lunch the next day. Sweet deal!

We recently added a tweak to the plan – each of us gets one of our days off per month – it now typically works out to a commitment to cook (and clean up) for only three days a month. While there are a few days with no scheduled dinner, this does allow for using up leftovers or going out.

Update Jan 2012: Our sharing system has come to an end. It gradually broke down over the past few months. We went from each cooking three shared meals per month to two, then a key person dropped out completely in November. December proved to be the last month. As the sharing got less frequent, we started cooking more just for ourselves, we ate out more often, and we bought a second fridge to handle the extra ingredients needed for seven people to eat separately.

The lessons learned? A voluntary system depends on everyone being keen. In the beginning the system worked great and everyone was excited to take part. Having people who eat in a similar way is also important. It is not enough just to have vegetarians. Some cooks may use too much of certain spices or flavours for other’s tastes, or they may tend to over-cook things, or they like to eat mostly raw vegetables which can leave others unable to satisfy their hunger. One needs to be open to new taste experiences but sometimes our fussiness got the better of us. We also needed patience when meals ran later than planned. Ingredient quality was also an issue at times – each cook had a different take on what was acceptable  in terms of freshness. Some cooks made a big effort to shop for local and organic ingredients, others didn’t. Our next attempt a shared meal system starts in May 2012 and will feature commonly bought ingredients and financial incentives for cooking.