Dinner at the Dudley Co-op

At 6:30 p.m. on a recent Sunday evening, students began to trickle into the dining room of the Dudley Co-op and help themselves to the baked tofu, vegan pasta, and salad from the mismatched pots on the table in the entrance hall.

Unlike upperclassmen living in the House dining halls, residents of the Dudley Co-op eat together every night and work with one another to cook the all-vegetarian options and homemade bread.

The food represents the community of 3 Sacramento St.—co-operative and, as Martin Eiermann ’10 put it, “quirky.”

‘FOOD IN INSANE QUANTITIES’

Earlier that afternoon, (Artemisha) Misha S. Goldfeder ’10 rummaged around the large walk-in refrigerator in the Co-op kitchen, searching for ingredients for that night’s dinner.

Buying food for the 32 Co-op residents can be a daunting task, according to Rebecca R. Rojer ’10, but the Co-op residents split up duties to make the process easier.

“It’s cool getting food in insane quantities, and it’s about 50 percent cheaper than retail,” Rojer said.

The co-op works with bulk distributors and a stand at the Harvard Farmers’ Market to buy ingredients. Along with the communal labor, these deals allow the Co-op to offer a significantly lower board cost than the traditional Harvard meal plan. Board was $750 this past semester, according to Robin S. Bellows ’11, while eating at a dining hall cost over $2000 per semester, according to the Financial Aid Office website.

The quality and type of food often changes from semester to semester because the community is so small and as the character of the residents changes, so does the food, Rojer added.

“There are some times when people care about food politics and other years when people are just hungry,” Rojer said.

After finding what she needed, Goldfeder set a large cookbook on top of ten blocks of tofu on the table next to her. The tofu has to drain in order to be cooked properly, she explained.

Although many residents eat meat, all Co-op meals are strictly vegetarian and offer vegan dishes. Residents also opt for organic options if they are not too expensive.

“I much prefer the fresh vegetables here. When I go to a dining hall it all kind of tastes the same—like nothing,” Rojer said.

While residents like Rojer prefer the fresh vegetables to typical House dining Hall fare, others acknowledge it appeals to a certain kind of character.

“It’s the kind of things that a bunch of scrawny vegetarians like to munch on,” said Remeike J.B. Forbes ’11, one of the Co-op Co-Presidents.

WHIPPING UP A MEAL

This particular evening, Goldfeder was in charge of cooking all of the main dishes for dinner. She added three chopped heads of cabbage to the already overflowing giant wok on the stove. Her vegetable stir-fry, along with pasta, tofu, and salad, would feed all 32 residents.

Cooperative living is fundamentally about taking responsibility for your own life, according to Dudley House Master James “Jim” M. Hogle, and cooking meals is a large part of this lifestyle.

When the Co-op was founded in 1958, Radcliffe College and Lesley University students were hired to do most of the cooking, Forbes said. As the community evolved, residents have taken on all of the day-to-day responsibilities, which they said allows college to be more like real life.

“[The Co-op] reminds me of my house. My mom loves to cook,” Goldfeder said. “You have to work to make it your home, but it’s really a home, not a dorm.”

The Co-op is managed through a points system in which students need to fulfill a certain number of credits every two-week cycle, which means cooking dinner can be an optional chore.

“A lot of people in the Co-op eat incredibly well but never cook,” Rojer said.

For those who do cook, meals are an opportunity to channel creativity and inspiration, Rojer added.

“I like to have themes in a meal because it’s a little weird when we have Indian food and pasta in the same meal,” said Goldfeder, who, like many in the Co-op, is a Visual and Environmental Studies concentrator.

She nibbled on a piece of leftover tofu, contemplating whether she would reuse it.

“The theme of this dinner—take all of these old things and make them better, hopefully” she said.

Recipes are rarely followed. While they are useful for inspiration, Goldfeder said, it is impossible to follow a recipe when cooking for 32 people.

“At the Co-op, there’s a lot of public education in cooking,” Rojer said. “You learn little things, like that certain spices taste better toasted.”

For breakfast and lunch, residents have access to the full-scale industrial kitchen to cook their own meals, a perk that drew some of the current residents to the Co-op.

Christopher A. Johnson-Roberson ’11 said he decided to leave his blocking group when they wanted to move out of Dewolfe housing. Making the switch to the Co-op allowed him continued access to a kitchen.

AT THE TABLE

By 6:45 p.m., over 20 Co-op residents were seated at the long central table among an assortment of old mugs and mismatched plates and chairs, a stark contrast to the uniformity of House dining halls.

The Co-op dining hall is the central space of the building, and it brings the community together throughout the day, according to Iman E. James ’12.

“I’ve been sitting at this dining table for the past six hours. The dining room is actually more social than the living room, not even including dinners,” James said.

Quiet conversations and the clinking of forks filled the room. As Goldfeder took her plate at the table, everyone looked up from their food and began to clap—a nightly tradition of thanking the cook.

“I love dinner and the whole ritual of sitting down,” Eva B. Rosenberg ’10 said. “Everyone is there at more or less the same time, and there’s always fun conversations and bonding. It’s the best way to show a non-Co-oper what it’s about.”

Some residents, however, acknowledge the drawbacks of not having the House dining hall experience or a Harvard meal plan.

“Harvard has no central space, so the dining hall serves that purpose. Technically, we’re kind of excluded,” Forbes said. “I miss the free French fries.”

After ten minutes, the table fell silent as Forbes began the Co-op’s weekly meeting, held over dinner each Sunday. This evening, the students discussed the idea of reducing communal dinners to give people a break from cooking during the stress of exams.

After debate on the proposal, Anne Marie Zapf-Belanger ’10 made an earnest appeal to the other residents to keep cooking.

“I would like to have dinner during exams because dinner makes me happy,” she said.

A few snaps of agreement could be heard in the room as the Co-op residents voted to keep cooking dinner, another example of the “very, very close-knit” community Hogle described.

—Staff writer Stephanie B. Garlock can be reached at sgarlock@college.harvard.edu.