One of the things I've always wished for was to live someplace (be it apartment building or neighborhood) where I really knew my neighbors. I'd love to have people in close proximity with whom I could have dinner, or drop by with a baking project gone right. Unfortunately, I've yet to find that. Craig LaBan, the restaurant critic for the Philadelphia Inquirer lives on a close, friendly block (just like the one I would like to find for myself). In yesterday's food section, he writes about how his family has teamed up with two other families on the street to take turns cooking dinner once a week. It started because they all had kids on the same swim team and would arrive home on Monday nights exhausted and with nothing on the stove. They determined that each week, one family would make enough for all three, so that the parents would get a break from cooking two out of every three weeks.
The project has had benefits beyond simply providing dinner. It has exposed their kids to a variety of foods that are not typically found in their home kitchens and has brought the families even closer together. While they don't eat the meal together (I imagine no one has room for three families to sit down to dinner together), they all acknowledge that they shared meal experience has made them less like neighbors and more like family.
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