Note: DCCC is not currently taking new members or functioning as a cookbook club. In the hope that the following discussion of how DCCC meetings were structured might be of use to anyone thinking of starting up their own club, I have left it in place as a resource.

Schedule: Bimonthly

Unlike most book clubs, which meet monthly, DCCC meets every other month.* The reasons for this are both cost and time. Cookbooks tend to be more expensive than novels or works of non-fiction, the typical genre of reading groups, plus there is the cost of ingredients for making recipes and the time needed to make them. Spreading the costs and time needed for making recipes over a two-month period per cookbook is more practical for most people. Members can use the DCCC blog to stay in touch during the sixty-day hiatus between meetings.

*(Exceptions warranting a change to the bimonthly schedule are exhaustive tombs with more than 100 recipes, which may warrant three months, or much shorter works, such as a memoir with a handful of recipes, which may require just a month.)

Time and Date: 6:00 PM, Sundays, preferably first of the month
The meeting day and time of DCCC chapters do not have to be the same as my own club, though the date ideally should fall within a week of my group’s meeting date so that all members have a shared experience and so that all members’ postings are timely and topical—that is, about the same book that everyone else in the club is currently reading and cooking from.

Meeting Duration: How can you put a time limit on good food, drink, and conversation?

Place: Members’ homes or a neutral setting
No matter where they’re held, the potluck meetings  must be held in a place with access to a kitchen to allow for maintaining the chill on chilled desserts, giving last minute finishing touches to dishes, and reheating.

Agenda: It’s simple. Eat and discuss the cookbook and food.