1. Cooking Together

This is by far the simplest and easiest way to connect to other people in the kitchen. Preparing a meal together, whether with family or friends, is a fantastic way to work on interpersonal communication and cooperation skills. When planning this activity, know the participants. Plan an activity that will engage everyone regardless of age and skill level. Make sure to have enough adult hands to aid young children with tasks that require finesse or where safety is a concern. Keep it light, don’t stress if the vegetables aren’t perfectly cut. This isn’t about starting a cooking school, it’s about learning to work together and to enjoy each other’s company while working on an activity. If you are doing this with your family, ask for everyone’s input on what recipes should be prepared. Don’t overreach and pick recipes that are intricate or require expert skills. Keep things simple and relaxed. When the food is fully prepared, sit down and enjoy eating it together.

2. Plan an Ingredient Treasure Hunt

This is an activity that may sound silly but can be a great way to get to know people. With adults this can be a team-building activity and a great way to get to know co-workers or members of a club. This is also a great beginning of a cooking party for teens or younger children as well. As the planner, make sure to pick a great recipe that has enough ingredients for each team to be able to find. With a complicated recipe, each team could have a different list of ingredients so that in the end everyone needs to find all of the ingredients to complete the recipe, or have each team find the complete list of ingredients to make multiple batches. Beforehand, you should also make sure that the place your teams will be shopping has all of the required ingredients. Keep it light – it isn’t about being competitive, but about getting to know the person/people that are working together. For a playful competition, have small prizes for the team that finds all of the ingredients first; or even for the team that finds the fewest ingredients or finishes last. This can be modified to be done in a grocery store setting, or a farmers market, or open market like a shuk. Make sure that adults are paired with younger children. Set a time limit and pick a meeting spot.

3. Meal Prep Swap

‘Meal prep’ is all the rage these days. It is a way to ensure that you and your family have healthy homemade meals even on busy weeknights. A meal prep swap works well with people that live near each other or with family that is close-by. Each household prepares multiple portions of the same meal and then the groups swap with each other so that each household ends up with five or six different meals that are ready to go. The actual prep can be done at separate times or all at the same time, but in each individual’s home. You could FaceTime while prepping or if you have a great prep space the meals can be prepped together. It’s your meal swap so you get to decide the details. Some important ground rules to start with, however, are: 

1. Make sure that the people involved in the swap keep kashrut laws in the same way that you do.
2. Everyone involved is aware of any food allergies or issues among the participants and that these ingredients are not used by anyone.
3. Everyone sticks to the same budget restrictions.
4. Everyone needs to prepare on the same day.

Here is an example of a meal prep:

Shoshana, Penina and Rochel all live in the same neighborhood. To meal prep for six nights they each would have to make two meals three times (triple the amount so it can be divided into three) so that when exchanged each household would have six different meals. So Shoshana preps vegan buddha bowls and vegetable strata. Penina preps minestrone soup and a crockpot curry. And Rochel preps tacos and make-your-own-pizza meals. Each of these women would make triple quantities of the meals they are prepping. When they meet to exchange meals, all three women would have two meals they made themselves, and two meals from each of the other women, equaling six different meals per household.

4. Themed Potluck Dinner

This can be an exceptionally fun way to host guests or family, or to make a meal fun for the people in your home. The reasons to have a themed meal are as varied as the themes themselves. The only limitations are your imagination and your budget; but for this to be successful everyone needs to agree on the theme. Think of things your group enjoys. Is your family seriously into the Harry Potter books? You could do a ‘Night at the Three Broomsticks Inn’, serving up frothy pints of butterbeer and all of the delicious goodies from Hogsmeade. Or if movies are more to your liking, pick a favorite and create your menu based on the movie you love. Once a theme is chosen, plan a menu involving all of the participants. Decide who will make what, or where the menu will be prepared, and voila! You have a themed meal.

5. Clean Up Caravan

Cleaning up after a meal is a chore that many wish could be forgotten. When this chore is turned into a group activity it is somewhat less loathsome, and by working together it is done in far less time than if it was being tackled alone. Even the youngest of family members can help with this, as long as you make sure assignments are developmentally appropriate and safe for the child to do. There are more than enough steps to cleaning up after a meal that the jobs can be divided up easily. If the participants have a broad age range, pair up older players with younger ones so that they can help each other. If this is being done amongst adults, just make sure to divide the chores evenly. For example: Clearing the table, washing the dishes, drying the dishes, putting away the dishes, sweeping the floor and so on. By doing this as a group the table conversation can keep flowing and the time spent together is enjoyed by everyone. This is also a great way for parents to model responsible behaviors to their children and teach them not only how to clean up, but how to communicate with a group to make sure a task is completed well.

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