Home Cooking

For those who crave heartwarming, home-cooked meals, and a tight-knit community with whom to share them with, Princeton’s student-run food cooperatives are the prime culinary alternative to the dining halls and eating clubs.

At each of Princeton’s four co-ops –– the vegetarian 2 Dickinson Street (affectionately known as 2D), Brown, International Food Co-op and the Real Food Co-op –– students take on two-hour cooking shifts on a weekly basis, preparing meals to feed crowds of anywhere between 12 to almost 50 people. Featured on daily dinner menus are items like sesame tofu, freshly baked bread, fish tacos and spiced lentil stews.

For many, cooking a meal for a family of four is daunting enough. So what tips and tricks do co-ops have for feeding large crowds, night in night out? 

“There are no tricks I know of except that one has to cook four times as much as the recipe says,” explains Dora Demszky ’17, a 2D member and its so-called “Minister of Decay,” in charge of composting food waste (there is also a Minister of Defense responsible for sharpening knives, a Minister of Love in charge of organizing social events, and the somewhat Orwellian-sounding Ministers of Truth, who make sure everyone has done their chores).

Meanwhile, the popularity of co-ops is growing. More than 200 people are on the waiting list for 2D alone.  

“The number has skyrocketed over the years,” says Vidushi Sharma ’17, who manages 2D’s waiting list. And as more students become interested in finding alternatives to eating clubs and exploring independent-style eating options, demand for co-ops will likely just keep growing.