Share Food with Neighbors, Get Dinner for the Family
You have book club on Tuesdays, bridge club on Thursdays and wine club on Saturdays. Got room for one more? What if we told you it would help save you money and give you a great dinner?
Food sharing clubs are becoming a staple in many areas, especially urban areas and big cities. The premise is simple enough: you meet with your neighbors and friends, and share food. It could be the extra food in your fridge that your family won’t eat but is perfectly good, or the extras from the farmers’ market. They could also be the additional dozen muffins you made for the bake sale. Finding these like-minded groups is easy; type in the search term and zip code, and you’re bound to find a club near you.
Share and share alike...make food and spend less!
Take it one step further, and create a dinner club. You make a dinner (a pan of lasagna, a crockpot of stew) and swap with friends. Every Sunday, for example, you get together and trade dinners. The key is to make the dinners freezer-friendly so they can be used/thawed when they’re needed. The Hip Girls Guide to Homemaking has some great ideas.
Beyond stocking your freezer, there are other great benefits, according to ParentHacks.com. You can introduce your family to new meals or ingredients you’ve never heard of or cooked with, and it’s a money-saver when compared to take-out (and those take-out containers, which many times aren’t recyclable!).
While these clubs are fun, it’s important to keep the rules in mind. A neighborhood club is one thing, but when clubs grow to the point of including hundreds of people, it gets to be a zoning and health code issue. Read this article to learn what happened in Oakland, CA. It’s an extreme example, to be sure, but one we’d be remiss if we didn’t include, and every state is different.
So, what kind of food sharing clubs do you belong to? Go ahead and dish (pun intended)!
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