>With six roommates, I would cook a couple dishes a week. Every meal would be multi course, with different people making salad, protein, sides, and maybe mixing up some drinks for the cooks.
I've never split meals with any of my roommates when I had them, and I cringe at the idea of asking them to accommodate my own idiosyncratic tastes. I, naturally, have lived on my own since I could possibly afford it. But I can see why this would be a huge benefit if you are so inclined to shared meal prep.
This article also makes a strong case for repealing laws outlawing SRO buildings, which can be designed to better accommodate shared cooking and socializing spaces than a building of 1 bedroom apartments.
I lived in communal houses for a very long time. The best was something like this - we had communal meals four nights a week, and everyone had one cooking night. The other nights, you know you just show up and there's food. It's way easier to scale a single meal up to more people than it is to cook a smaller meal every night. And as folks cook together and rotate around, they learn and cook better. And you end up with more variety, as you experience the full gamut of idiosyncratic tastes. :)
> And you end up with more variety, as you experience the full gamut of idiosyncratic tastes.
That's only a benefit if you're interested in variety. For a lot of people, their idiosyncratic tastes are things they _don't_ like.
Yeah, if you’ve got really hard opinions about what you like, it might be tough. It might also be a way to expand your palette though? I’m living with a Swiss girl and an Argentinian guy right now and am enjoying the new foods I’m introduced to.
In school, with roommates/housemates, we would very seldom do shared meals (where one person basically prepped the meal) and I do pot-lucks with friends today. But it's not the normal thing. People have different schedules and preferences.
I'd add that there was an activity crowd that I'd eat (Chinese) out with on a very regular basis in school but we never cooked together.