Dinner on Your Doorstep : Families: A modern solution for a vanishing tradition. How working moms team up to get home-cooked dinners on the table every night.

I loaded the three grocery bags into my car. Worried that they would tip over, I drove to Diane’s house slowly.

“We loved your chicken last week,” Diane said as I handed her one of the bags. I, in turn, told her how delicious her pasta primavera had been. We chatted a little about our teen-age kids, then I left for Charlotte’s.

“Mmmmm, smells good,” Charlotte said, taking her bag. “What are we having tonight?”

“ Fajitas ,” I said. “It’s a recipe from Sunset magazine. I hope you like it.”

“Sounds wonderful,” she said. “I love fajitas .”

No one was home at Susan’s, so I left her bag by the front door.

It was 4:30 on a Monday afternoon, and I was through with cooking for the rest of the week. I went home, curled up on the couch and dove back into the novel I was reading. At 6, I quickly warmed up dinner for my family; they were thrilled with the fajitas .

When my neighbor first asked me to join her cooking co-op, I was skeptical. When would I have time to cook for four families? I had enough to do, working, juggling the activities of two teen-age boys, keeping up with the usual household chores and trying to save some time to spend with my husband.

I figured that cooking for the co-op would be a lot like cooking a huge Thanksgiving dinner once a week. Wasn’t I having enough trouble just cooking for the four of us? Some nights I found myself hurrying up and down the aisles of the grocery store after work, trying at the last minute to decide what to have for dinner. Some nights I even ran to the nearest fast-food joint for something quick to put on the table. Wouldn’t joining the co-op be taking on one more commitment, one more deadline in a life already too full of them?

But my neighbor insisted that all the women in the co-op were juggling schedules as busy as mine. She swore that the co-op had actually given her more free time. I decided--tentatively--to give it a try. Just for a couple of weeks.

The first time I cooked, I was nervous. Would I make enough? Would they like it? My family reminded me that their reputation was also on the line--they had talked me into cooking their favorite family meal: fried chicken, stir-fried vermicelli and salad.

I began at noon. By 4 p.m., I was slipping on an oily floor, my sink and counters were piled high with dirty pots and pans, and I was exhausted. But I had done it. All of the containers were filled to overflowing. (I still have a tendency to make too much.)

Mustering what little energy remained, I walked out of the disaster area my kitchen had become and went off to deliver the meals. Charlotte says that when she saw me, she figured I wouldn’t last another week.

But there were rewards I hadn’t counted on. Not only did everyone like the meal, they took the time to tell me so. Rarely, in all my years of cooking, had my family offered up compliments. I discovered that I love having my cooking appreciated. I decided to give the co-op another try. . . . And another. I was hooked.

Since that first cooking day two years ago, I have become more organized. I find that it usually takes two hours or less, from start through cleanup, to prepare the meal. For my two hours of work on Monday (including cooking and cleanup) and approximately $30, my family receives four meals a week through a dinner co-op. Diane cooks for us on Tuesday, Charlotte on Wednesday and Susan on Thursday. And I actually enjoy having Monday afternoon set aside. I turn on the television--the afternoon movie--and go to work, putting more effort into that one meal because it is the only one I’ll cook all week. (On Friday we eat leftovers, Saturday we eat out and Sundays my husband gets his turn to cook.)

Our meals include baked or barbecued chicken, cashew chicken, pork chops, turkey sausages, enchiladas, chimichangas , soups, stews, chili, various salads and meatless dishes. We try to stay away from beef, fat and salt, but this is not a rigid rule. We glean recipes from friends and from magazines, and I’ve rediscovered old treasures among the yellowed cards of my own recipe box.

The co-op started seven years ago. Susan and three of her neighbors, tired of the struggle to get a family dinner on the table every night, banded together to find a modern solution for this valued tradition. Each of them cooked one night a week for all four families. The others came to the cook’s house with their own serving dishes, filled them and took them home to their dinner table.

After two successful years, Susan’s dinner co-op disbanded because one family moved away and another’s children went to college. But Susan was able to join her friend Diane’s dinner co-op (only two miles away, and in this co-op the cook delivered in microwavable containers).

The most common question people ask when they hear about the co-op is: What if one of the cooks is a dud? There was one cook, a while back, who made food that nobody liked. She was asked to leave the co-op. It’s the only way to keep our families happy. We have no rules in the co-op, but it works because we’re all committed to the idea.

Even still, things sometimes go wrong and we resort to emergency measures. One Tuesday when Diane’s day fell apart, she brought us ravioli and salad from the local delicatessen. (I repeated this dinner once myself.) And once when Charlotte’s oven broke, her baked potatoes became boiled-with-cream-sauce potatoes. And there was the time Diane forgot to slam the tailgate of her station wagon, and one family’s dinner spilled all over the street. That night Diane’s family had sandwiches while the rest of us enjoyed her chicken and broccoli.

After the novelty wore off, my family had some difficulty adjusting to the different styles of cooking. They were used to the eight or nine dishes that I cooked over and over. Now they were having pasta salads, sauteed turkey sausage and onions, chicken pockets. And they were complaining.

I almost gave in to my family’s complaints. Then I realized that I was actually excited about what would arrive each night and that they were getting a more relaxed mom. Furthermore, my family was eating more healthfully than ever. It was then that I adopted Diane’s philosophy: “If you don’t like it, you know where the peanut butter is.” Once I made that commitment to the co-op, my family accepted it too.

Now my 16-year-old son is my deliveryman, and my husband waits by the door to see what’s for dinner. It’s gotten to the point that I don’t know what my family would do if they had to eat my cooking every night.