Meals minutes: 2011-03-29

Minutes:

In attendance: Mary King, Kathy Boblitt, Gail Graham



We had a discussion on what to do when people are chronically late in paying
their Meals bills. It creates a cash flow problem when households carry a
large unpaid balance. We want to be able to reimburse cooks (and the Meals
shopper) as soon as they turn in their grocery receipts. The Meals system
runs pretty tightly, and our checking account balance gets pretty low when
people don’t pay their bills.



It was suggested that we come up with a budget for the shopper.
*MONKEY: *Kathy
will run the Meals pantry/staples report and bring it to the next Meals
meeting so we can discuss, look for trends, and come up with a budget.


At the next community meeting (where we can get time on the agenda) we would
like to have a discussion, led by Mary, regarding the possibility of
eliminating a meal every other week, beginning with the start of the next
work season (September 2011). *MONKEY: *Kathy will obtain the
statistics/graphs that were presented at a prior community meeting so we can
re-visit which meals historically have low attendance, etc.


We discussed the high expense of ordering takeout for community meeting
night meals. It was suggested we keep a list of takeout menus and ideas on
hand for the folks who are ordering/cooking for community meeting night
meals. (Past ideas: pizza, subs, Star Cafe, Chinese food, soups from
Peoples Food Co-op...) The meeting night meal attendance has been
decreasing, possibly due to the high cost of takeout, but we think there
would be a lot of opposition to eliminating these meeting night meals
altogether.



Mary would like Meals committee to purchase some special equipment to be
labeled as “gluten-free ONLY” for kitchen use, such as:

- Cutting boards

- Wooden spoons

- Colander/strainer

- Toaster

We’ll look at the budget, but this seems doable. She also suggests that we
buy ONLY gluten-free soy sauce as a kitchen staple, since it is readily
available most places.



We discussed having a kitchen training once every work season, open to
everyone (cooks, cleaners, others). Mary would be happy to conduct this
training, and she can easily incorporate some gluten-free cooking tips into
the program. She proposes doing a one-hour training during an upcoming work
day, and emailed the Work Committee with the idea.



Helen noticed the large towels in the kitchen (lower cupboard by the Hobart)
are getting quite frayed. She would like to cut these up for use as rags
before the next work day (and she would take them home afterwards for
washing so they won’t get mixed up with the rags currently being used for
dinner cleans). We think this is a good idea. *MONKEY: *Kathy will put out
an email asking for donations of bath towels to replace the frayed ones.
_______________________________________________
Talk mailing list
Talk at gocoho.org
http://gocoho.org/mailman/listinfo/talk_gocoho.org