Dinner co-ops

Shortage of time is one of the greatest obstacles to eating well. We might want to choose fresh, whole foods but it’s easy to reach for highly processed foods or stop for a fast food meal when time is short.

Responding to the time crunch takes creativity. One of my favorite ideas is the dinner co-op or supper club.

A dinner co-op can take any number of shapes and forms, but the basic idea is that a group of people cook for each other -- allowing everyone to eat more home-cooked food but saving time (and often saving money) in the process.

Several years ago I was part of a group that came to be known as the “Monday Night Supper Club that Meets on Tuesdays” (see Simply in Season page 218 for my version of the most memorable dish of that experience, Pumpkin Chocolate Cheesecake). The supper club was made up of six single folks and one couple. Each week one person would cook and host an evening meal for the rest.

Meals were not fancy and neither was the atmosphere; as young adults with minimal furniture some of us barely had enough chairs to go around. On at least one occasion I recall everyone eating pancakes on the floor of my apartment with crates for tables, and for a while everyone needed to bring their own tableware. Everyone understood that it was fine to come, eat and then hurry off to other activities. Yet often we lingered over tea. For those who live alone, it can be difficult to bother with cooking, and it was nice to know that at least once a week we would have a “real” meal with others.

This past weekend I heard of another model. Six families in Portland get together once per month. They eat bring pre-portioned entrees, divide them up, and everyone takes them home for the freezer. Each portion serves about two adults; there’s no need to worry about having different numbers of small children in the different households. Most often the meals are toppings for rice, polenta or pasta, but casseroles, soups, enchiladas, lasagna, etc., also freeze well. What a better way to go than buying heavily packaged TV dinners! And what a nice way for parents of small children to get to enjoy more “grown-up food” with minimal effort. Make one meal, get six!

Co-op America offers several good tips for starting a dinner co-op:
http://www.coopamerica.org/PDF/CAQ60.pdf
http://www.thegreenguide.org/article/community/neighbors

This is a link to a dinner co-op website (with a completely different type of organization) that includes lots of recipes:
http://dinnercoop.cs.cmu.edu/dinnercoop/coop-info/intro-general.html

These links describe more ways that dinner co-ops can be structured:
http://dinnercoop.cs.cmu.edu/dinnercoop/coop-info/existing-coops.html
http://www.centerforsustainablecommunity.org/dinner-learning.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A35836-2004May18.html

If you’re part of a dinner co-op, tell us about your experience. What works well for your group?

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The SIS recipe of the week, Greens in Peanut Sauce, makes a delicious, easy side dish to a curry meal. Speaking of saving time: A few weeks ago I helped to make a huge batch of Red Lentil Coconut Curry (page 206) for the Oregon Mennonite Festival for World Relief. After we finished making the red lentil sauce, we realized that we had overestimated: this was too much! We decided to remove several cups of sauce before adding the cauliflower, sweet potatoes, and cabbage.

We found that the sauce freezes well -- much better than freezing the completed dish, which would have resulted in mushy vegetables. It’s going to make a super-simple meal later: just add the fresh vegetables, cook and serve!

Next time, I’m going to make extra curry sauce to freeze on purpose.

(Recipe changes weekly. To get on our recipe e-mail list, go to the SIS website and click on "Register.")