Barnstorming on an Invisible Segway

At several periods, the household I was living in did cooking by having the participants each in charge of a week. For that week, they had to plan and shop and produce dinner (minimum of 3 in exceptional circumstances, more strongly preferred) with some goal of having leftovers for lunch, and also picking up things people needed for the fill-in meals and the usual other stuff one often buys at the grocery store (soap, bags, etc.). (This was not an attempt to make an ungameable set of rules for enemies who lived together; this was a fairly successful attempt to set some principles to allow people living together to share around the cooking work in a way that avoided inappropriate uses of the kitchen knives on housemates.)

That's pretty much my favorite. It's *MY* refrigerator for the week, and it's not my problem the other weeks.

I'm also of the "chief cook and bottle-washer" religion, which means I'd much rather clean up after myself than after other cooks. (I do a fair amount of clean-as-you go when there are spare minutes, and do some planning and expedients to dirty less stuff).

I rather like planning a set of menus; the times I dislike it tend to be times when I'm too busy to actually do the cooking (and have to anyway). Planning leftovers, and things that get used in the next meal (ham bones in soups, leftover roast port in grill sandwiches, etc.), and stuff you have to buy in excess (carrots) makes it all an interesting problem.