Meals minutes: 2014-07-01

Agenda:

- mini rice cooker
- workforce for next season
- principles for staple purchases
- online meals system
- changing the default template to include other allergens
- next meeting

Minutes:

Attending: Malcolm, Willie, and Elph.

Rice Cooker:
Mini rice cooker, was it donated? First, is it used often?
If so, then we would need to check with the donor about selling it.
We could poll talk@ to see if it's even used. Malcolm will send the email and report back the results.

We have 3: 1 large, and 2 small. Do we need all 3? No.
Maggi donated one, and Hope donated one. If neither are being used, then we can offer each of them.

Workforce
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Willie will continue doing the meals scheduling, and will come up with the count of the number of meal shifts we need for next season. The meals shopper falls under our purview.

How many counted members do we want? We currently have 3. Members are still too new to make a decision. We can make a change in the future. Pre-assignments. Willie is willing to be the convener again.

Staple purchases
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Things that get used a little bit at many meals, for example: olive oil, spices, butter, margarine, flour.

There's also longevity issues... like toilet paper, it doesn't go bad... but spices can go bad if not used within a few months.

Economical, better to purchase in larger quantities.

Healthy, obvious ends of the spectrum, don't go to complete artificial or stock every type of alternative sweetener on the planet... nor every latest "whole foods" trend. "Best effort" of avoiding hydrogenated fats, for example. Preferred brands, to make the shopper's job simple.

We could ask cooks what things they feel should be kept as staples. This would inform where to start. Bring back the compiled list to meals for a human judgement. Would something last a long time, so it wouldn't matter. Whereas walnut oil, which goes bad in 3 months... no.

There's also an interest in not clogging up the cabinets. If we had smaller spice bottles, then it would be a lot easier to find stuff.

We could use a spice rack.

Should we stock materials for minority eaters, things like GF flour, non-dairy butter / margarine, etc? People who eat alternatives often have preferred choices. We could do a poll for these items to find out which are favored items. Rice flour, peple would use just a tablespoon.

Pasta would be a major ingredient, and so it would be purchased by the cook for the meal.

For example, if I'm cooking beans and rice, i wouldn't expect to see beans to be in stock... but cayenne powder would.

Would we want rice? We could store it for a long time... but mice could get into it. Rice can go rancid, particularly if it were to go bad... having it on hand would encourage people cooking it. OTOH, there are a lot of varieties of rice that people like to use.

Salad dressing and condiments, many people would prefer to avoid corn syrup, and some sweet ones. Some "lite" and non-lite. We can have a variety of stuff. Poll for what people enjoy eating. Shall we pick one brand or another? We can take this opportunity to avoid some stuff.

We could start by asking the shopper what they're buying now, add it to a google doc.

Many items are added to the whiteboard, are all of them meals, or are some of the CH? Where is the line? Does the shopper buy all of them?

CH cleaning supplies for the kitchen and bathroom. Apparently, the CH committee doesn't have a shopper. Does the meals shopper buy stuff for CH? Willie will track this down, and ask this person what they're buying. Is there a list, and what is on the list?

Online meals system
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We have some concerns about the future of the online meals system. Elph will be discussing this with Adi.

Changing the template to include other allergens
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Ask Adi to add eggs
Poll if anyone still wants to keep stuff, or add anything.

Next meeting
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Next meeting, Wednesday, July 16th.