Meal Ticket: Shared Meals, discussion and Community Cookbooks

Oakland, Portland, San Francisco, New Smyrna Beach, New York, 2011-Present

Sharing a meal together is fundamental to the human experience and the development of culture. Community Cookbooks have a long legacy in the United States of identifying and celebrating communities, from museum docents to religious groups to the Junior League.  They have often been used not only for fundraising, but also as collective memoirs of place and culture, not to mention often the only place women had been ‘published’.  

Meal Ticket brings together different individuals and groups for home-cooked meals and recipe exchanges that facilitate conversation and community. The recipes are compiled into community cookbooks, creating unique group identities, while the meals propose temporary utopias. A recipe is a set of instructions, not only for food but also for disaster, a painting medium, a marriage, etc. The recipe exchanges spark storytelling about culture, family, and values.

I have facilitated these meals and made cookbooks with museum workers, groups of arts and tech workers, performance artists, segregated senior citizens in the south, community activists, and international musicians, among others. For the Silver Social Club Meal Ticket events I hosted in New Smyrna Beach, Florida, the same or similar recipes were offered with different titles: Watergate Salad and Heavenly Hash are virtually identical recipes coming from women with very different backgrounds. With Portland Art Museum staff, the meals represented acts of silo & hierarchy-busting. During the 2016 election, decisively political recipes were offered. I have hosted close to fifty meals, and collected hundreds of recipes since 2011.

Meal Ticket is available for team building and similar activities. Please inquire for pricing.