Sunday “Family” Dinner

Note: Sunday Family Dinner is on hiatus until further notice. We will not meet as scheduled on Apr 5 and we'll evaluate the situation as we get closer to Apr 26.

We hope you're taking this time to cook great food and call your friends and acquaintances. Keep community alive!

The principle: people bond around (a) food and (b) shared effort, and it’s easy to combine those two things, in shared cooking.

Sunday Family Dinner, started Nov 2018, is a periodic group cooking event. It's a chance to get together, with friends and strangers, and share the work of cooking together, and the pleasure of eating together.

Every three weeks, on a Sunday evening, a group of about 6–12 people convenes at a house in Seattle's Central District. The ingredients have been purchased and a menu has been set, based on a theme—like “Spain” or “Pineapples and Coconuts.” The group breaks into 3–5 teams of 2–3 people, and we set to work.

Working with your teammate—who will in all likelihood not be the person you came with—you'll create your special dish. Some dishes are harder than others, so you can choose your challenge level. Intimidated? You can take it easy. Want to push it? Try something you haven't before!

You bring $10 and a Tupperware container in case there are leftovers. The $10 covers the cost of the meal. Two or three people might bring a bottle of wine, but it's not expected that you'll bring a beverage. I usually have something non-alcoholic, like sparkling cider, to pass around.

We're usually done around 10pm.

Don't let “Family” in the name fool you. It's about a sense of familiality—not specifically for parents and kids. Small kids are welcome—but check with the host, because the environment may not be kid-proofed. Kids old enough to get bored but too young to help cook might not be ready for this—but again, talk to the host!

The point is to get people together—not just friends, but people from different communities, and see what happens when we put our shoulders into chopping and concocting… and then bond over eating (that ancient tradition).

Meals are usually vegetarian, but might sometimes depart from that. An announcement of the theme goes out about a week beforehand, and you can enquire if you have questions about ingredients.

In general, various allergens like nuts and gluten might be included, but I'm interested in doing specific menus that force everyone to go without something they're used to—so watch the emails for that if you're interested.

The point is to get people together—not just friends, but people from different communities, and see what happens when we put our shoulders into chopping and concocting… and then bond over eating (that ancient tradition).

Maybe we talk about what matters to us; maybe we learn about food.

I've done this before, and I've seen what it can do. A good friend created a version of this event, called Frugal Foodies, which ran in Berkeley, CA for several years; I also participated in the connected group in Boston. And my formative cooking experiences were in a rigorous group-cooking house, where we did something kinda like this 5 days a week.

I discovered then that we can learn lots about food, and each other, through the act of chopping, mixing, heating, timing, and nearly lighting things on fire. Food releases some kind of trust, and warmth.

To join in, send a message to ezra@ezrakilty.net. I'll put you on the general mailing list, and then when you see a time and a theme that works for you, you can sign up for that edition. Details will be sent a few days beforehand to people who are registered. You can always bring a friend or three, just make sure they get signed up a few days beforehand.

Past Themes: