Cooking a good meal is for many, myself included, one of life’s real pleasures. But too often I find that it’s limited to weekends or special occasions. Normal life and especially weekday evenings just don’t have enough space for being creative in the kitchen and more often than not we rotate through a tried and tested selection of meals which we know well.
There was a time when we were preparing an evening meal for our kids and then a separate meal for the grown ups. Those have thankfully now merged into one family evening meal, but still cooking a meal (and cleaning up afterwards) is one area of life where communal living beats individual or family living hands down in terms of efficiency. Add in an opportunity to catch up and socialise with others and you’ve got one of the easiest potential wins for making your life more communal.
Supper clubs, dinner parties and pot lucks aren’t new ideas of course. They’re super easy to coordinate and it doesn’t really push you much out of your existing routines. We approached the idea with just two main rules. Firstly, we invited guests to come at very specific times. In our case it was on a Wednesday evening, arriving anytime after 6pm and leaving by 8pm. This allowed us to keep other parts of our life, like kids bedtimes, consistent. There was socialising, but we were not hosting long rambling dinner parties. The second rule was that guests should not bring gifts or be required to help. We were cooking and sharing our meal. We didn’t want people to bring food or drinks. Or do the washing up even. The pay back for us is that down the line they would return the favour. This was actually quite hard to instil, at least initially – polite bunch our friends…
To make the practical side of things easier, we usually cook big one pot type dishes. Normally vegan, to accommodate as many diets as possible. Normally kid friendly too. Seasonal, healthy, hearty. But not a feast by any means.
We also didn’t require people to let us know if they were coming. We didn’t want the hassle of dealing with replying to lots of people. We just made sure there was plenty of food and if there are leftovers, they either get sent home with guests, eaten the next day or frozen.