Community cooking

>> Cheap eats and neighbourhood spirit
are served at NDG’s new co-op kitchen

EATING WITH CAMARADERIE: Fiona Keats (right)

by TRACEY LINDEMAN

Notre-Dame-de-Grâce’s new dining co-op is serving up heaping spoonfuls of nutritious yet delicious community spirit for people looking for a little camaraderie or solidarity with their gazpacho.

“Food is the heart of communities,” says Spencer Mann, co-founder of Montreal Urban Community Sustainment (MUCS), the organization that set the dining co-op in motion over the summer. MUCS was conceived with the ultimate goal of creating affordable and sustainable community housing; right now, the focus is on setting up the components to make that a reality, including common spaces, and a kitchen. With little more than $1,500 and the kindness of wrench-wielding strangers, the kitchen was up and running by mid-July.

Mann and MUCS board member Fiona Keats assumed they’d have their work cut out for them in their neighbourhood outreach quest, but were surprised that 35 members had already beaten a path to their door by the beginning of September. A handful of those people are co-tenants at 2000 Northcliffe—the so-called Northcliffe Square, a building housing several community organizations including MUCS and the adjoining dining co-op, just outside Vendôme metro. But NDG residents and even some from outside the reputed activist-y community have come a-knocking looking for an affordable and communal way to get their three square meals.

“It’s such a great alternative to food banks,” Keats says. All-meals members currently pay $125 a month ($75 for low-income) for 21 meals a week, and are expected to put in five hours a week of cooking, cleaning and meeting; for those who can’t handle that much community, half- and one-third meal programs are available with fewer meals but fewer responsibilities.

That said, the dining co-op isn’t able to feed the masses. With some of the common space still under construction and a modest-sized kitchen and dining area, Keats says its purpose is not to become a sort of restaurant; rather, the focus is on maintaining quality food and quality member dynamics. Too many cooks in the kitchen may spoil the community aspect at the root of the dining co-op. Keats instead underlines the need for more kitchens. “This is a really cool model for other neighbourhoods,” she says.

Though taking the leap and starting the dining co-op on a tight budget may have been daunting, community members did benefit from outside help. People and businesses have donated kitchen equipment, some Jean-Talon Market vendors have donated food or offered special prices and two plumbers voluntarily installed its sinks.

The kitchen is a bit of a fixer-upper—it needs more cupboards and a wheelchair ramp, for starters—but it’s just what members of the NDG community needed. Three families and many low-income individuals have joined the dining co-op, as has a visually impaired person who frequents the Montreal Association for the Blind in NDG.

Keats herself is an NDG native and a third-meal member, though she does more than her share of the upkeep by helping with the financials, food shopping and maintenance.

“I was born and raised here—what a cool thing to be happening in my own backyard,” Keats says. “It’s not pristine, but it’s home.”

Visit www.mucs.ca for more info on joining.