East Bay Cohousing

Join Betsy Morris and Raines Cohen, Cohousing Coaches and EBCOHO organizers, with area community seekers and residents of an East Bay Cohousing neighborhood, to together prepare a community meal/BBQ at Berkeley Cohousing, now celebrating over three decades as a community, with a rare short-term rental available. And get a preview of Saturday's East Bay Cohousing Crawl and Sunday's Cohousing & Beyond Summit in Sacramento.

At an (un)Common Meal, we take over a cohousing Common House kitchen on an "off" night and prepare our own Common Meal together; some members of the community may join us to eat it. The shopping will already be done, but we'll get to cook and clean and learn together, discovering the joys and challenges of feeding a group of diverse humans with unique needs, and cleaning up afterwards.

We charge dinner guests to cover the cost of ingredients, but we are delighted to be able to offer this event FREE to recipients of SNAP/EBT food assistance, since we know this is a challenging time and we want to support you through it -- that's what community is all about. You can RSVP but you don't have to do the "purchase a ticket" step.

Schedule for the evening:

• 5-5:30 PM Cooks arrive and start prepping dinner, under the guidance of a community member (we take care of the meal planning & shopping in advance)
• 6 PM Cleaners arrive and get to visit a home or two.
• 6:30 PM Break to eat and share about our community living and searching experience
• 7:00 PM Cleaners start cleaning, cooks continue discussion (cleaners can rejoin when they're done)
• 8-8:30 PM Wrap-up and go home.

Note: Everybody is either a cook or a cleaner. If you arrive too late to cook, you're a cleaner. Don't worry if you haven't cooked for a group before, we'll have plenty of experienced hands on hand, and the right tools in the Common House kitchen to make it fun and easy.

We'll take turns, with one group cooking while another socializes, take time to eat together, and then the cooks get to relax while the cleaners cleans up.

Advance registration required, so we can shop and prepare. We always use local organic ingredients to the extent available, and offer alternatives to accommodate a wide variety of dietary needs.