Start Your Own Supper Club

All you need is an idea, friends who like to cook, and a place where you can gather and share a meal.

By Molly O'Neill

From Reader's Digest

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Since the 13th century, dining groups have created community, honed cooking skills and cemented friendships. In today's rushed world, where many meals are eaten on the run, the greatest luxury is an intimate dinner with friends. To that end, many of us are forming supper clubs.

"It's like the next generation book club," says Kelly Griffin, a designer in Jackson, Mississippi. For the past six years, her group has chosen a single cookbook to use for a year.

Across the country, there are church-based clubs, gourmet societies and casual groups dedicated to cuisines such as Asian cooking, raw foods or, like the Culinary Historians of Ann Arbor, to historical dishes. Then there's Womenade, the potluck for change that has grown nationwide (most Womenade groups raise money to help women in need). The glue of all these clubs is a shared passion.

"Our group meshed so well, we've taken several trips together," says Griffin. They travel to eat and learn.

To start a club, post notices in gourmet grocery stores, cookware stores or the cookbook section of a bookstore to solicit members.

You can cook together or have each person bring a prepared dish. An organizing principle -- a single ingredient, a cooking style or cooking for a cause -- builds community quickly. In most groups, members take turns as host.

From Reader's Digest - September 2005

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Start Your Own Supper Club

All you need is an idea, friends who like to cook, and a place where you can gather and share a meal.

From Reader's Digest - September 2005

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