A Recipe for Community

By Michael Caballero

Do you like to cook? It seems like such a simple question. Yet it’s one with nuanced answers—and for our housing community, it’s one of the most important questions we ask applicants during the interview process. Cooking and food are essential ingredients to our success as a community (pun intended).

We’re able to learn a lot from people’s answers to this question—from their comfort and experience in the kitchen to their personal preferences when it comes to food. These insights often translate into how they’ll approach all the joys (and realities) of cooking in our SHI kitchens.

There are no right or wrong answers. We simply want to understand a person’s relationship to food—an important topic that often comes up at house meetings, family meetings, and with prospective families. When applicants talk about their cooking experience, we frequently hear how they take pride in their skills or share short anecdotes about preparing meals for large family gatherings. These stories are often followed by mentions of favorite dishes or traditional meals that require a certain amount of kitchen know-how. We love hearing about favorite recipes or funny cooking stories, but most of all, we’re interested in how people connect to food—what it means to them, and how they see it as a way to connect with others.

Of course, we do need staff who can actually cook meals for large groups most nights of the week. But over the years, we’ve learned that cooking for our communities is a skill that can be developed. We’ve also seen how flexible and appreciative our house members are when it comes to meals—no matter the ingredients or style.

One of our assistant program managers, Lauren, shared her experience cooking for one of our houses:

“I love cooking for these guys because they eat whatever I make. They’re always complimenting my cooking—and they love my salads.”

When I asked one of the house members, Michael, if that was true, he smiled and said simply,

“[I like] anything… anything they have here.”

Perhaps Jorelle, one of our program managers in Brookline, summed it up best when asked why her house members love her cooking so much:

“It’s because I cook for them how I would want someone to cook for me,” she said with a smile. “With a little TLC.”

It was fun to visit some of our houses and chat with our house members about what they enjoy most about their meals and dinnertime. Their answers were a wonderful affirmation that our managers and cooks are doing something right. While “breakfast for dinner” remains a crowd favorite, we were delighted to hear that plenty of other meals are just as loved.