Neighbors of mine would bring me food sometimes, in my old apt., after they noticed me lingering on the stairs, sniffing the air and sighing loudly about my own cooking efforts.

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Jeffrey Steingarten writes in the introduction to his first book, "The Man Who Ate Everything" (great book, by the way, if anyone wants a great collection of food essays to read) about the 8-taste-test -- basically, most Americans claim they are "allergic" to things like onions (newsflash: onions are in everything, if you were really allergic you'd be dead) or lactose intolerant are not, actually, allergic or intolerant: they just don't like that thing. Steingarten reads in a medical text that children who are made to eat things they do not like eight times lose their dislike for that food; that picky eating can be overcome by willpower, essentially. So he takes 8 things he does not like at all (the only two I remember right now are Greek food and Deserts at Indian Restaurants, though the rest are all single foods, like, say, carrots), and makes himself eat them eight times.

The result? By the end of the test, he finds he does like those things. That, prepared well and properly seasoned, they are all delicious.

Let me tell a little anecdote about myself. I spent the first 17 years of my life absolutely repelled and repulsed by eggplant. I thought it was disgusting, every little thing about it: taste, texture, all of it. When I was in high school I was a vegetarian, and I took a school-sponsored trip to the UK. In London, we went to a restaurant where they had a pre-determined meal for our group, which was pasta with meat sauce. I was not the only vegetarian in the group, and when we informed the waiter he told us genially that they could do a substitute sauce: pasta with tomato and aubergine sauce. It was served, I ate it, I loved it. It wasn't until I got back home and told my mom how much I loved aubergine that she laughingly told me that aubergine and eggplant are the same thing. So it turns out that when I was a little kid, I was grossed out by the word "eggplant" and made myself think I didn't like it. I was wrong. I did. But my preconceived notions got in the way.

A neighborhood cooking co-op would allow so many people to eat things they may not have eaten before, to experience other peoples' comfort foods, to open up whole new horizons of delicious and affordable food that we can serve to, not just ourselves, but our future families as well.

Could the co-op idea become difficult/be unreliable/potentially create bad blood between neighbors? Sure, but so can badly-parked cars and ill-placed trashacans. We've become so clinical and sterile with our food -- we buy overprocessed crap because it's cheap and "safe." A dislike of onions can be overcome; a lifetime of eating chemicals cannot. I say open your minds, open your kitchens, and open your mouths: there's a whole new world to taste.

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Second, even without that I am a food control freak. Like Sadie said above, the kind of person who gouges her palms "in an effort to keep from reaching out and saving a sauce from misplaced creativity or incomplete knowledge." Ow.

I love cooking for groups. There is nothing that makes me happier than having a house full of people, kids, and dogs, drinking wine and cooking while doling out chopping jobs to kitchen bystanders. I love chaos in the kitchen. As long as I am in complete, iron control of it and no one, NO ONE, touches a work in progress.

Scary Jewish Foodie Moms, represent!

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I can only remember maybe 2-3 times at most that a "cooker" got held up at class or work and had to order a last-minute pizza, and I was almost forced to taste so many new things as a participant, which as the world's pickiest eater up 'till then ended up being a really great thing. Though I still to this day cannot handle the smell or taste of venison (which is too bad given how lean and healthy it is), which one girl tried to make all the time since her hunter father always supplied her.

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