Overdue Idea: The eat-local home cooking pool

THE ISSUE: Thursday night and it’s your turn to cook. You peruse the pantry with a sinking heart, wishing you’d actually read that cookbook you got for Christmas. You’ve already done your signature chicken-and-mushroom dish this week, and there’s no taco kit in sight. Pizza Friday looms and you’d like at least one more nutritious meal to set the kids up for the weekend.

With a sinking heart, you pull the rip cord and pile the family into the Odyssey, resigning yourself to a visit to Jack Astors and a slow start for your New Year’s resolution to cut costs and eat better with home cooking.

THE VICTIMS: No matter how much effort we put into our meals, we probably could be doing better (unless you’re vegan, which requires a level of effort beyond my capacity to imagine). And some of us have, ahem, limited culinary abilities. You might be a whiz on the grill, but a klutz with the Le Creuset saucier. It doesn’t take long to get sick of sausages and strip loin steaks (a la Kraft barbecue sauce), and it also doesn’t take long for that kind of eating to add up to a larger belt.

And if you co-habitate, the cooking burden will necessarily fall on the superior chef, which can get really old in a hurry.

But you know what? There’s plenty of culinary skill around, even if many of us are specialists. You might be the grill guy, but your next-door neighbour is a pasta machine, and the woman around the corner is a stir-fry goddess. If only these talents could be merged to benefit all…

THE FIX: So imagine meals-on-wheels spliced with a key party. That’s what we’re going for here.

You partner up with, say, three other people in your neighbourhood; other singles if you’re single, families if you’re married with kids etc. Each of you is responsible for meals for the group on one night of the week (we’ll say Monday to Thursday, because Friday IS pizza night).

On Monday, for instance, you’d prepare meals not just for yourself, but for everyone in the pool, and figure out a way to deliver them. On the next night, however, you’d get a meal delivered to you from one of the partners, and another the next night from a different partner, and so on.

So we’re talking one night per week of heavy planning and cooking, but then three nights off, and actual variety in your menu. So you do your sausage avec Dijon once, and then get a steaming pot of pho that you could never in your wildest dreams have prepared yourself, the next night.

You’d be eating better, saving time, and enjoying a home-cooking cost structure. Plus, you’d be spending less on more, buying in bulk for the one big meal you’re responsible for.

And hey, just for kicks you could all dine together one night of the month, and maybe make some new friends.

Except not on pizza Friday. Pizza Friday is sacrosanct.