Start a Cooking Club
Some people love to cook, but many people don’t take the time to cook a complete, hearty meal every day. That’s why a friend of mine and I started a cooking club. One day each week, members cook extra food and share it with other members.
The club started small, with just our two households cooking double and providing extra food to the other household just one day each week. Soon, a third friend joined in, and I learned it doesn’t take any more effort to cook a meal for three families than to cook for one.
At least three nights a week, we relish knowing we’ll have a meal cooked at home by us, and two nights a week, we don’t have to do anything but heat up meals provided by other members. I avoid making easy stir-fries, stews, or soups, instead planning slightly more complicated meals. To help us with this goal, we found a website where we could enter the ingredients we had on hand and it would provide a list of recipes—like recipe roulette!
Flush with success, I also joined a freezer club where we traded meals among multiple groups of five or six members. A single trade had to be enough for all group members, five or six 1-gallon freezer bags full, labeled with the date and contents. Whenever I felt like cooking a lot of one recipe, I’d fill the required number of bags and freeze them until it was time to trade with the group. We met once a month, and I’d take home five or six different meals each time.
This freezer club also had gluten-free and vegetarian subgroups. I'd usually participate in two or three subgroups each month and would end up with 10 to 15 different meals for my
