There's a super easy way to reduce the amount you need to cook by half or even more, and not many take advantage of it.

Cook twice the amount and trade half with your friends/neighbours. There are pretty much zero downsides to this. You get to try different food more often. You don't have to cook as much. Your friends get the same benefits too.

This edition of Meditations has been sponsored by Pyrex

The only thing that is a little challenging with this is finding the right people. Your ideal food swap partner should meet the following criteria:

• willing to eat your food (this one is kind of necessary otherwise they're not going to agree to it in the first place). Consequently, you must also be willing to eat their food. Luckily this is something you can control, and you can suck it up if they aren't a good cook.

• similar dietary preferences to you. If you want to include more protein in your diet, then it's good to have someone who has the same preferences.

• similar body size to you. This is so that your portion sizes will match up. Not strictly necessary but definitely nice to have. If you are a couple and swapping with another couple, you can average out the two body sizes, which makes it easier to find a match.

• live nearby. You will be swapping food regularly so it helps if you live nearby each other so you don't have to travel far. Even better if you see each other regularly for other reasons anyways.

You don't have to stop at one food swapping friend, you can add as many as you like. You could be cooking once a week if you manage to find 6 other friends to swap your food with (and assuming that it can last that long). This is the beauty of economies of scale. By simply adding more people, you drastically reduce the amount of work required.

My coliving idea takes advantage of this. By having up to 24 people in a single household, only one or two cooks are needed to provide food for everyone. Thus the frequency of cooking for an individual can be quite low. Even better is that it's likely that there'll be some people who enjoy cooking and they'll want to cook more often. They can exchange their other chores that they don't enjoy as much. Through scaling a household up to many more people, there are many efficiency gains to be made by leveraging each person's strengths and covering their weaknesses. I don't know any mum who wouldn't happily trade an hour of looking after their kids for doing some cooking, and I'm sure many people wouldn't mind looking after some kids for an hour if it means they don't need to cook.

Thanks for reading Meditations. If you end up trying out this idea, please let me know! I’d love to hear how it goes.

Subscribe to get new posts straight to your inbox.

There's a super easy way to reduce the amount you need to cook by half or even more, and not many take advantage of it.

Cook twice the amount and trade half with your friends/neighbours. There are pretty much zero downsides to this. You get to try different food more often. You don't have to cook as much. Your friends get the same benefits too.

This edition of Meditations has been sponsored by Pyrex

The only thing that is a little challenging with this is finding the right people. Your ideal food swap partner should meet the following criteria:

• willing to eat your food (this one is kind of necessary otherwise they're not going to agree to it in the first place). Consequently, you must also be willing to eat their food. Luckily this is something you can control, and you can suck it up if they aren't a good cook.

• similar dietary preferences to you. If you want to include more protein in your diet, then it's good to have someone who has the same preferences.

• similar body size to you. This is so that your portion sizes will match up. Not strictly necessary but definitely nice to have. If you are a couple and swapping with another couple, you can average out the two body sizes, which makes it easier to find a match.

• live nearby. You will be swapping food regularly so it helps if you live nearby each other so you don't have to travel far. Even better if you see each other regularly for other reasons anyways.

You don't have to stop at one food swapping friend, you can add as many as you like. You could be cooking once a week if you manage to find 6 other friends to swap your food with (and assuming that it can last that long). This is the beauty of economies of scale. By simply adding more people, you drastically reduce the amount of work required.

My coliving idea takes advantage of this. By having up to 24 people in a single household, only one or two cooks are needed to provide food for everyone. Thus the frequency of cooking for an individual can be quite low. Even better is that it's likely that there'll be some people who enjoy cooking and they'll want to cook more often. They can exchange their other chores that they don't enjoy as much. Through scaling a household up to many more people, there are many efficiency gains to be made by leveraging each person's strengths and covering their weaknesses. I don't know any mum who wouldn't happily trade an hour of looking after their kids for doing some cooking, and I'm sure many people wouldn't mind looking after some kids for an hour if it means they don't need to cook.

Thanks for reading Meditations. If you end up trying out this idea, please let me know! I’d love to hear how it goes.

Subscribe to get new posts straight to your inbox.