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.
A fraking amazing Battlestar Galactica cake
Iced Tea 101
Pierogies + cheese + onions + kraut = Parmageddon!
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
5-02-2008 @ 1:30PM
Julie said...
I am fortunate to live in a neighborhood just like that. I am Italian, Russian and Polish and my neighbor behind me is German and our neighbors next to him are Irish and dutch and so on and so on. We all eat very well together from Gnocchi to schniztel and everything in between, it's a lot of fun.
http://www.noshtalgia.blogspot.com/
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5-02-2008 @ 2:53PM
KF said...
I love this idea, and wish I had it as well. The closest I ever got to this feeling of interaction was at my lawfirm about 10 years ago. At the time we had 13 employees and the assortment of lunch bags and forgotton leftovers and whatnot in the community fridge was creating a hazard zone, and we didn't have decent sandwich shops nearby. We ultimately came up with a "Lunch Co-Op."
To form the lunch-co-op, we collectively agreed to have on hand the following items:
Assorted sliced bread, lunch meats, cheeses, salty stuff, beverages, Produce, Fruit, Condiments, Extras (sweet surprises or candy).
Then, we made a chart and assigned out how much (volume) was required for each category, based on the number of participants. Every Monday, you brought in enough of your category for the week, to feed the members of the co-op for one work week.
It was actually very economical. The only expensive week was "Meat Week" because you'd bring several lbs of lunch meat for 13 people, but, you'd coast for several weeks in between on other categories. Produce was a cheap week. You ate for maybe $5 for the whole week.
We purchased big plastic containers, and kept all co-op food in the containers in the fridge, and each day at noon, put them on the table. We all filed in and made fresh sandwiches, or a salad, and had fruit and snacks, and ate TOGETHER for a change, actually talking and saying "ohh, nice choices on the bread this week, John" and "Who brought brownies? how thoughtful!" We'd even say "Mary is still in court, let's make her a sandwich, she always likes xyz" and it would be ready when she got back.
Every day we could make any kind of sandwich from the co-op box, take a bag of chips or snacks, grab a beverage. No one ever abused it. In fact, for those who chose NOT to participate, they were banned from the fixings. They'd stare longingly at our rueban sandwiches and turkey and stuffing sandwiches and ask, please, could they have a sandwich? NO! We'd shout. BAN THE NON MEMBERS! Then we'd make hissing noises.
We had a great deal of fun with it, and it was a complete success for about 4 years, until the firm closed.
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