Cooking breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day for 30 days—the core tenet of Epi'syearly COOK90 challenge—is an act of individualism.
At night, when your group of friends is out for drinks and chic wood-fired pizzas, you're at home nourishing yourself with sweet potato-chickpea curry. At lunchtime, while your coworkers are trading hot office gossip at that fancy salad place, you're at your desk, reading gossip on The Cut and eating a homemade soup.
For some people, taking this time for themselves is one of the reasons they do COOK90 in the first place. But not me. Last January, when I did COOK90 for the first time, one thing saved me: the fact that my coworkers and palsBecky,Chelsea, andErikawere doing it, too.
Call them my COOK90 Club. If COOK90 is a sport (and itdoesrequire skill, endurance, and practice), my COOK90 Club was my team—training right along with me, supporting me when things got hard, and overall helping each other win.
Like any team, there was an element of accountability. Just as you're more likely to go to the gym if you have an appointment with your swole (but kind of judgey) trainer, you're more like to make your own brunch if you've made a pact with your friends to stay away from the bagel shop. It's positive reinforcement—mostly. Your COOK90 Club will be right there with you, encouraging you to boil those eggs and toast that toast. But they'll also raise an eyebrow when they see you enter the office with a suspicious brown paper bag. (Hot tip: the words "Dunkin' Donuts" give you away.)
My COOK90 club was IRL, but it could just as easily been virtual. In fact, my club had a virtual aspect as well: a group text. That's where we traded recipe ideas and humblebragged about how late we'd stayed up meal prepping. (Nothing bonds the human race more than communal gripe sessions, and nothing bonds a COOK90 Club more than communal gripe sessions aboutmeal prep.)
It helped that my team was made up of coworkers. For me,breakfastandlunchare the most difficult to pull off during the week. So I was motivated by my COOK90 Club lunches, where we ate our packed lunches together at a table by the window, talking instead of staring into the void of our computer screens (or rushing out to grab a $12 sandwich).
You could take this a step further by doing lunch swaps. Because while COOK90 rules dictate that you makealunch every day, it doesn't have to beyourlunch. You could make a salad and your coworker could make a soup and the two of you could trade. Another idea is that everyone could make a component of a lunch that you can all then assemble into a bowl when you're together. For instance, one person makes crispy spiced chickpeas, another makes roasted vegetables, another makes an herby rice, and yet another makes a dressing. Each person brings his or her component to work, and boom: there are the makings of assemble-your-owngrain bowls.
And when it comes to dinner? That may be the best part. A COOK90 Club is basically an excuse to have a lot of dinner parties, if you're into that kind of thing.(I am.) These don't have to be dinner parties in the traditional sense. In fact, they won't be, since everyone has to cook something. Last year my COOK90 Club took turns hosting dinner at our respective apartments, and we divided up mains, sides, and desserts so that everyone could cooksomething. Sometimes these were casual weeknight hangs, sometimes they were weekend extravaganzas. In both scenarios, it was less boring, more social, less monotonous, and more fun (for me) than cooking alone.
Speaking of COOK90...
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