Tuesday, September 18, 2007

Supper Swapping

I know a few of my local friends lurk (and even comment) here, so I thought I would throw out an idea:
http://www.trishberg.com/html/supperswapping.html

The Great American Supper Swap by Trish Berg

Basically, the idea is that 5 women team up and each cooks dinner one night of the week. Then, you deliver to all 5 families. Weekends are for leftovers and eating out. I can see HUGE advantages to this, with a few logistical nightmares. Such as "How can I possibly fix enough food to feed my 7 and 3-4 other families with 6-10 people each?" We're talking food for 30-40 people! Then again, I've always been of the mind that if I'm already cooking, I might as well cook enough for an army.

For instance, she mentions pot roast at one point. Well, I only know how to cook pot roast in the crockpot. Would I need to collect everyone's crockpots? Would I take the food to their house and have them put it in the crockpot? I guess I will leave the pot roast to someone else and I will focus on the chicken.

Anyone want to try this out with me and see how it goes?

8 comments:

John Hattan said...

I presume the book will cover this, but there's also gonna be some logistical issues involved with my little family trying to share with those bigass mormonoid families.

But I do understand the whole bit about scale, as it's not three times more difficult (or expensive) to make a triple-batch of spaghetti rather than a single batch.

Although I can't imagine how I could make enough food for 50 people in my little 3-person kitchen. It'd take all day and every bit of crockery I had, although I guess it'd pay off when I had six days to rest it off :)


Myself, I head to Starbucks every Sunday morning and grab every leftover grocery-coupon flyer at Starbucks. I then log on to thegrocerygame.com (use john@thecodezone.com as a referral code and get me a free month), build a shopping list of the best coupon deals, and shop at three different grocery stores. It takes a little work plus some organizational skills, but I typically get 60-80% off. That plus avoiding eating out helps tremendously in the frugal department.

Emmy said...

Melissa - I am SO GAME on this one! Count me in!!
Em

frizzlefry said...

This is one of those logistical concerns I worry about. There are 4 of you, two who eat very little as compared to 7 of us- all of whom are pigs. Wouldn't one meal for everyone be way more expensive for you than 5 meals for just your family? That part seems inequitable.

Don't get me wrong- I'm still happy to have you in, but we need to have you cook very inexpensive stuff to offset the sheer volume of people you would be feeding!

Hattan- Teach Dave that coupon thing. We used to do that years ago and saved a fortune, but I can't handle 3 stores anymore. Not enough time or health for it.

John Hattan said...

It's easy as can be. You first identify the stores near you. Then every Saturday afternoon they print up a shopping list of all the best coupon-deals in the store. It takes a few weeks to really get going because you need to keep your old coupon flyers, but once you have that stash, it's just a matter of looking up and clipping coupons.

Best deal I got last week was $110 worth of stuff at Kroger for $24.

Emmy said...

You're right, Melissa. It does makes things a little difficult with the numbers being out of wack like that. I talked to some of my sisters and friends who only feed two adults and one toddler, like us, and they sounded interested. So, I think I should probably go that direction. BUT, THANK YOU!! Great inspiration!

frizzlefry said...

Awesome! Let me know how it works for you guys! We'll let you try it out and then give us all of the tips. . .:)

kEllY said...

Melissa, does John know me and my bigass. Oh I mean bigass family?

frizzlefry said...

ROTFL!!