Dinner For 21 Four Families Enjoy More Free Time After Agreeing To Divvy Up Cooking Duties

Julie Goslee, mother of three young children, was all too familiar with the daily feeding frenzy — unplanned, unsatisfying meals thrown together at the last minute.

Keeping up with her three daughters — now 18 months, 4 and 6 and — typically left her without the time, energy or enthusiasm to spend several hours cooking at the end of the day.

“Once I had the third child, it was more difficult getting meals prepared,” she said. “We ate way too much McDonald’s, macaroni and cheese, and hot dogs. We didn’t eat well-balanced meals every night, that was for sure.”

Today, Goslee has a complete, hot, home-cooked dinner on the table before 6 p.m. four times a week. There is plenty of variety and rarely any frenzy thanks to the cooking co-op she started a year ago in her surburban Columbus neighborhood. Four moms take turns cooking for the entire group.

Each Tuesday, Goslee fixes dinner for 21 — four married couples and 13 children. On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays her children walk to a neighbor’s house at 5:45 p.m. and return with a basket containing a hot meal ready to put on the table.

Although each must cook for an army once a week, the four women say they are saving time and turmoil.

“We eat better and healthier,” Goslee said. “I have more time with our kids on the nights I don’t cook. I find I’m saving money at the store because I’m grocery-shopping much more efficiently. In the winter it’s a great way to keep in touch with the neighbors. We get to see them once a day. It’s been a fun thing to do.”

To avoid duplication, each chef is assigned either beef, pork, chicken or “other entrees” to prepare throughout the month. Advance menus are circulated. The planning allows each to shop for specific ingredients, instead of wandering through the supermarket looking for dinner ideas. Knowing which meat to prepare all month enables them to buy in bulk.

“It’s dinner hot and ready to go - the whole thing,” said Becky Blatt, Goslee’s first shared-meal partner. “There’s a meat or vegetarian main dish, a pasta or potato, vegetables, fruit, bread and sometimes a dessert.

“It consumes a good portion of your afternoon when you are cooking for that many,” continued Blatt, a mother of four. “But I’d rather consume one afternoon a week than five. It’s not as overwhelming as we once thought.”

“I can’t imagine going back having to cook five nights a week for the kids.”

Goslee said she got the idea for the neighborhood dinner swap from a magazine article and suggested it to Blatt in September 1996.

“We just thought we’d try it out and would cook two nights a week,” Goslee said. “We went into it pretty skeptical. I didn’t think it would last more than a month. But it was great. One month turned into 12 months pretty fast.”

The two invited another friend and neighbor, Jill Huskisson, to join at the outset, but she was even more skeptical. Huskisson, a mother of three, waited and watched for 15 months before cooking her first co-op meal Jan. 5.

“I am slow to accept change and it seemed like such a goofy thing to do,” she said. “I thought, ‘What if I really don’t want to cook the day it’s my turn, or what if I just want a pizza?’

“But they are really understanding and flexible. I’ve seen pizza boxes and Chinese restaurant cartons go between their houses.”

The women say their friendship enables them to be honest with one another.

One of Colleen Wahlen’s recent meals included “scorched-chocolate flavored pudding,” with a note of apology. The others didn’t complain when one of her meals was 30 minutes late because she forgot to turn down the heat on her stove and burned the chickens she was boiling for soup.

“There is no pettiness,” she said. “We all tend to be quite frank and appreciate the frankness. We can laugh about some things and say, ‘Let’s not have that again.”’ The four share some baking dishes and a box of miscellaneous plastic containers.

The women say their children look forward to visiting one another’s houses to pick up the meals. The kids are allowed to choose the menu on their birthdays. The consistent mealtime makes life more predictable and ensures that the evening meal is a family dinner instead of a series of independent feedings.

Husbands and children, for the most part, enjoy the variety of the meals, the women say.

“I don’t think we’re limited by the number of people, but we are limited by the kids,” Blatt said. “We’re definitely not cooking gourmet, but it’s not all wienies and beans and hamburgers. We’re more creative than that. We’ve had eggplant Parmesan. I serve mushrooms and squash and that kind of stuff because I want my kids exposed to it.”

Her husband, Greg Blatt, a meat-and-potatoes man, complains of overexposure.

“We send meat. We get casseroles,” he groused. “We send steaks. We get fish. I haven’t eaten so many casseroles since I was 8 and my mom was in the hospital.”

He recognizes the benefits to his children, however, and partakes of the imported dinners with his family. But he is no stranger to after-hours supplements more suited to his taste.

“The kids complain sometimes,” Becky Blatt said. “Other times they eat stuff I never would have dreamed they would eat.”