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The negotiations. They sat me down. Oh. And they kind of said, we need you to do these things a little more frequently and like on time. The joy. It definitely brings you together. The judgment. I think we're like, that's disgusting. You're putting yogurt on your rice? Oh, God.

What number? 56. Shall we just go upstairs? The producer, Hannah, and I have been to meet a group of third-year University of Central Lancashire students in Preston, in the north-west of England. Hello. Ruth and Hannah from the BBC. Nice to meet you. I'm Sasha. Hi, Sasha. Nice to meet you. Yeah, the kitchen's just the one on the end. Oh, it's nice and warm in here. This is Rosie, Kieran, Leah and Mary. Hello. Nice to meet you.

So what's for dinner tonight? Oh, we're making a pizza pasta bake, which I know sounds weird, but it does work, I promise. Sounds good. And what's the occasion tonight? It's our roommate's birthday today. Nice. This is one of the challenges, isn't it? Yeah. Cooking in a small kitchen your own way. Four hobs to six people is chaos. One oven, four hobs, six people.

Doesn't work, really. Tonight, Sasha and Mary are taking the lead, with occasional help from Kieran. Well, we have an issue. No! Wait, hold on. No, don't worry. Oh, phew. Nearly had a dilemma. We have really small uni students in this flat. Good job, Kieran. Thank you.

While the pizza pasta bake goes into the oven, we sit down to chat about what it was like to first leave home and find yourself cooking in a shared kitchen. So I think it's just like the balance of like...

it being on you because like alongside food you know you've also got to keep your area clean we've got our studies alongside that so I think it's just finding the balance because there are a lot of times you know you might come in and you cannot be bothered to cook and you just kind of want something quick simple and easy or you come in and someone else is already cooking yeah and then you've got to wait longer because you know you don't kind of want to get in their way so yeah I think at first it was probably a bit frustrating but I feel like

living with friends we found our own dynamic I'd say like I feel like we all kind of just have fallen into like a bit of a routine and some days don't have routines and that's fine but I think we're really good at communicating kind of

about the space and like oh I need to cook dinner at this time oh I'm going out so I need to do this kind of thing which is very helpful and what um what isn't so nice about it because I mean cleaning yeah cleaning is a big the bins taking the bins out and they need taken out a lot yeah especially with six people at least twice a week it's quite bad

who's the messy one? Oh, I feel like Mary. I wouldn't say I'm, well, I would say by their standards, I probably am the messiest, but everyone's messy in their own ways. So like, I won't do it. No. I will hold off doing my washing up because I have sensory issues. But then you have people like Sasha who does her washing up, but then leaves it on the drying rack for a week.

until she needs it again so then you can't wash up because there's no room on the drying rack so when you're getting irritated with one another what happens some quiet seething or a kind a gentle word or an argument a joke probably yeah yeah like oh mary you haven't washed your dishes again like it's usually just like a light-hearted joke it's never an argument no it's usually just ever argued over the kitchen no

Who's the best cook? Sasha. Me. No, no, no. What did she make the other day that she was like, oh, I'm a chef, I'm so amazing? Garlic bread. Yeah, she made garlic bread with some cheese in it. She didn't burn it, but she was just like, I'm a chef. But it was delicious though, right, Mary? Oh, it was so good. I split it in half, I put cheese and it was all melted, put a bit of veggie ham. Oh, it was class. Everyone was jealous, they just didn't want to voice it. It was better than my garlic bread though. Yeah.

kiri's looking skeptical i mean do you think you have learned life skills having to share a kitchen do you think you're better cooks better people somehow for having to manage and what's actually quite a difficult situation really i think i've um i think i've learned to tolerate better because back home it's more just sort of

do your own thing or if like my mum or dad is cooking then we're not allowed in the kitchen but then so I very much have that mentality that when I'm cooking I am cooking but obviously that can't very rarely happens in this kitchen so I think I've just I think I've learned to tolerate other people almost I know that sounds bad but in a sense of like I can share my space better and

now that I've had to share a kitchen, I've been forced to, which I think has done me for the good. Helped me be more sociable. I find myself actually, I mean, this sounds really bad, but I find myself actually engaging in conversation more with my parents.

I think it's because of this setting where you're constantly speaking to people, I mean friends, but you constantly talk about your day and how they've been and what we've just been doing on our course. And so I find myself speaking a lot more to my parents and to other people around me about how they are. I just find myself a lot more sociable, which I think I will take forward with me when I go on to have my actual life away from studying. If there's someone...

in their first year listening new to sharing a kitchen, what advice would you have for them? Do you feel you've learnt along the way? Be friendly to everyone because you don't really know what someone might be going through, especially in a communal area like this when people might just be sat on the sofa or look a bit down. You might just offer them some advice or maybe give them a hug. Just help them out, really. And if you can cook together, that is also good. It definitely brings you together. I think definitely...

moving out and having to go into a kitchen yourself you learn to not be so scared to try new things and were you a bit nervous at first oh definitely when I first moved in I didn't want to cook anything that took

lots of time to prep because I was scared people were going to judge me people tell me something I'm doing something wrong but I think as I've kind of grown up and then also moved in places with people that I'm friends with you realize it's not so scary and it's if you want to try something new you can try something new and they're not going to judge you if you do something wrong they'll help you if you do so yeah

be respectful to your other flatmates respect the um the boundaries i i guess uh don't take anything from them don't touch your pizza yeah just overall be respectful to them what have you had taken from you half a takeout pizza two years on it's still right is it it's not in those leah kieran rosie mary and sasha

In some parts of the world, when you marry, you share your kitchen with your mother-in-law. Priyanka Bhardwaj from Bangalore in India had a child's eye view of that arrangement. I grew up with my grandparents and parents. We shared a kitchen. On a day-to-day basis, it would be my grandmother and my mother who would run the kitchen together, but they had very

clear responsibilities in terms of who cooks what and when. Do you think that was the key to it working well?

Yeah, I think so. My grandmother mostly made a lot of these seasonal delicacies, especially during the summer when you have mangoes in India. She'd make a lot of pickles from mangoes and lemons and things like that. And she would also make a lot of fried snacks. But my mother would do all the routine regular breakfasts and lunches and dinners. So...

In that sense, I would say they got along well because they really didn't have to be together. That was the key. Yeah, yeah. Later on in life, Priyanka moved to Spain for a year to study. It was the first time she'd lived with anyone other than her family or her husband, and she found herself sharing a kitchen with classmates. Maxine was French and Joao was Portuguese. What did they think of your cooking?

To be honest, they thought it was strange. I remember I threw a Diwali party or like a dinner for my flatmates. I wanted them to, you know, taste my cuisine, South Indian cuisine. And then when we were done with the meal in South India, every meal is finished with curd rice. And they were like, that's disgusting. You're putting yogurt on your rice. And so I realized then that...

Because it was so unfamiliar for them, they were like not prepared to sort of appreciate the meal. But nevertheless, they enjoyed the fact that I was cooking for them and everything. So they offered to clean up after and everything, which was quite sweet. Were you offended at all? I genuinely thought it was hilarious because...

I guess it allows you to see your own food in a different perspective when someone sort of makes fun of it or observes something pertinent about it. There was this one time where...

the French guy had gone back home and then he brought back some cheese. It's probably the most disgusting smelling cheese I've ever like seen. And finally I got sick of it and I said, this is disgusting. The whole place smells horrible. Like, can you do something about it? And that's when Joao, the Portuguese guy, butted in and he said, oh, well, you cook, the whole house smells, but we still put up with it. And I was like, okay.

How rude. Sharing with a French guy and a Portuguese guy in Spain, did that help you open your eyes to other cultures, would you say? Both of these guys would cook every time their girlfriends came over to visit them. And that was something that I was absolutely unfamiliar with. I haven't seen men do that here. So for me, it was...

really a big sort of cultural awakening. And I moved to London after and my husband also moved there. So I couldn't live the same way that we did before. For me, it was really important that he also pitch in. So living in the house, that was quite a formative experience. Oh, yeah, absolutely. We have stereotypical ideas of cultures. We think French people are a certain way or Portuguese people are a certain way.

And you really get to appreciate the nuance and the diversity in those cultures. When you actually stay with someone every single day, you almost can't tell that they're from a different culture because you just treat them as people. Priyanka Bhardwaj, you're listening to The Food Chain from the BBC World Service.

World of Secrets is where untold stories are exposed. And in this new series, we investigate the dark side of the wellness industry, following the story of a woman who joined a yoga school only to uncover a world she never expected. I feel that I have no other choice. The only thing I can do is to speak about this. Where the hope of spiritual breakthroughs leaves people vulnerable to exploitation. You just get sucked in spiritually.

so gradually and it's done so skillfully that you don't realise. World of Secrets, The Bad Guru. Listen wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

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No purchase necessary. VGW Group. Void where prohibited by law. 18 plus. Terms and conditions apply. I'm Ruth Alexander. This week, how to share a kitchen.

Ruth, hi, it's Hannah. Oh, hi, Hannah. This is producer Hannah again. What's up? So I thought it wouldn't be right to hear about other people's dirty dishes, so to speak, without hearing about yours. So I've been in touch with one of your old housemates, Jess. I hope you don't mind. Oh, no. Hi, Hannah. I lived with Ruth at university in various guises for three years. I've been with her for a long time.

She was really rather meticulous in the kitchen. I sort of have an image in my mind of her almost tiptoeing as she sort of picked her way through the absolute horror that was our kitchen in our second year to find her way to the sink to wash up her items and very carefully dry them and take them away, I think probably storing them outside of the kitchen. Other horrors that existed in that kitchen at the time that were nothing to do with Ruth but...

was, I seem to recall, underwear being soaked in the kitchen sink for like a week at a time, just sitting there in water. As for Ruth's behaviour, in our final year at university, when her focus was probably more on her studies than her culinary expertise, she ate the same meal

for two whole terms which was potato waffles grilled with blue cheese on top I managed to continue to eat those for the best part of half a year if not more I don't know whether she still eats that it turns my stomach just thinking about it okay thanks bye potato waffles and blue cheese I'd forgotten about that yum yes very glad you didn't have that for lunch in the office today

I don't see what the problem is, but yeah, maybe it smells. I don't know. Certainly delicious. That kitchen, though, was indeed grim. Still, in my view, it wasn't as bad a situation as Corey Ferguson found himself in in Portland, Oregon in the US when his friend's brother's girlfriend moved in with her recently deceased cat. In my background...

When you're a young child and you don't really understand how grief works, your grandmother might put the beloved guinea pig into the freezer for a couple of days so that you can come and say goodbye before it's buried in the backyard. And so I suggested that in dealing with the grief, the cat could spend a brief amount of time in the refrigerator. That led to the cat being in the freezer for the remainder of the time that I lived in that house, which was about eight months, but was certainly arresting to see a

cat-shaped form inside of a black plastic garbage bag inside of the freezer. Eventually, thankfully, the kitty was buried on some national forest land where it can be visited and mourned over in future. And these people are still very good friends of mine. I adore them both. And sometimes, you know, when we're going through something, we need to take a little time and maybe literally put it on ice, I guess.

What a remarkably understanding person you must be, Corey. Care and Cooperation is also the foundation for communal living at Old Hall in Suffolk, England, where 40 people live together in a large manor house tending the land. I've been speaking to two of them, Rosalind Bars and Maya Watling, about how mealtimes work.

We have a router and in the kitchen we have a board with all the what we need doing. So people will sign it for cooking dinner and things. And then people actually, sometimes when if you're busy and you're cooking, people actually can ask people who are a grower, say, can you bring this? Can you help me to do this? And you prepare food. It is quite a long process because you're not only peeling potato for four people.

It takes like a whole day for cooking. Well, how many are you cooking for? It depends. Like if we have a volunteer or a family who lives here, we have friends, nearly 40. 40? 40. And we have a beautiful kitchen. It's the heart of the community. And it's just being in a kitchen and asking people to help us. That is very nice. I mean, initially, was that daunting, the thought of cooking for 40 people? I mean, that's... Not entirely.

I mean, not many people do that. You might have a dinner party with maybe max 10 people around and that would be a big dinner party. Yeah, but we always have a system where people are, when they moved in and they are not very confident cooking for that many people, we always say, oh, let's do it together. For me, it's cooking 40 people is not very hard because I used to be a head chef in Hong Kong. Oh, well, that would help. Yeah, that did help me quite a lot. Yeah.

Rosalind, what about you when you first had to make a meal for 30 or 40 people? What was that like?

I think I did it first when it was the middle of summer and there weren't many people around and somebody desperately needed to cook. So I thought, OK, this is the time now. So I remember doing roast lamb and potatoes and something else. And people were quite surprised that I knew how to cook. And after that, I felt OK about it. Gosh, roast lamb for how many people? Mm-hm.

about 30-ish, I suppose. I mean, it was 29 years ago, so I can't remember exactly. You say it was such nonchalance, but, you know, that's a big task. Yes, it can be, but...

And people don't have to cook if they don't want to. If they really don't have any inclination to do so, then they can contribute by washing up or start the day where they clean the kitchen so it's ready for the next person to use or take the compost out, empty the recycling bins. You know, there's something that everyone can give their hand to. We have to admit that the rota isn't always filled all the time, but...

Is it hard to find enough willing cooks sometimes? It has been recently, but gradually we're getting new members and they're enthusiastic about cooking, so that's going to help. I think the people who have lesser abilities to do so feel a bit...

Not put off, but... Intimidated? Yes, that's the word, maybe, yes. And dinner is 6.30 in the evening. 5.30 and 6.30, when you're getting dinner, is quite a sort of pressurised time for the cooks, as...

we do want to be on time because everybody is expecting it and some people will come into the kitchen because we haven't mentioned either that it's an open plan. It's a very large room so the kitchen and the dining area, it's all open plan. So people will come in at 6.30 if the bell hasn't gone and sort of look at their watch. So it can get a bit pressurised. And my friend got...

And when dinner's ready...

You ring a bell. That's right, because there's a bell tower, because nuns lived here and friars lived here, and there's a deconsecrated chapel, and there's a bell tower, so we use that bell to signal when our meals are. Well, I don't know, fortunately or unfortunately, all the village know when we're going to be eating. Rosalind Bars and Maya Watling.

If you've been listening to this and wondering whether you yourself could be a better housemate, what could you do to improve? I've been talking about this to Ana Rodriguez, the editorial aide for the Washington Post food section. She has tips drawing on her own experience and that of people she's interviewed. I'll kind of keep myself honest here and say that

There was a time where I was not amazing at doing the dishes on time. I think, though, probably the messiest was when I did my master's in London. And there were eight of us, I think, to a kitchen, but it was teeny tiny. And I just remember when everyone did their dishes, all of the, you know, debris and food got caught in the little drains.

drain and just the person who had to empty that out it was always just the worst did your roommates complain they sat me down oh and to be fair they were very like kind about it but they kind of said Anna we need you to do these things a little more frequently and like on time and I was like okay I'm

I understand. You're totally right. Like, I'm in the wrong here. I actually think it was that kind of shared flat that made me into a much cleaner and neater person, just partially out of necessity. There wasn't room in the sink to leave your dishes for a day. Would there be any arguments in that kitchen, small kitchen for eight people where the sink was always clogged? Yeah, not.

Full on arguments, but definitely some passive aggressive WhatsApp messages. I mean, we also had some real good dialogue about, you know, can you please do this? Can we get X, Y, Z? What's the worst experience you've had sharing kitchens? Probably in Dublin. Basically, I had an internship in Dublin for two months and I stayed in this

It was student accommodation during the year. And then during the summer, they kind of opened it up to whoever wanted to rent it. It was just this kind of like ever rotating cast of people I never knew who was in. I would have these like sad little meals alone. And yeah, just it didn't feel like the kitchen was like a particularly happy space. It's not that it was some...

crazy messy thing or you know anything like that it just it didn't feel like the heart of the home which is you know how I prefer it to be in this Dublin apartment I had one incident where

I didn't have very much, you know, I was only there a couple of months. It's not like I built up this crazy pantry, but I remember I came back from a weekend away and everything had been thrown out and that was awful. And I feel like, again, that was down to the fact that no one really knew who was in there. So for all they knew, I didn't exist. Someone had had a clear out and all your stuff was for the bin. Yeah, I think that they were leaving. So they must have just assumed, oh, no one else is here. So they just tossed all of my stuff.

These days, as a young professional, Anna's found her shared kitchen zen with two roommates in Washington, D.C. When she first moved in, Anna had the idea to cook a culinary icebreaker. And so I think I went with like a pretty simple pasta, just with like a red sauce with some like caramelized shallots, because I knew that that was good.

hopefully going to be a crowd pleaser, nothing too, you know, wild in there. I think we got lucky in that a lot of our eating habits lined up. And that first shared meal seemed to set the tone. My roommates and I share a lot more than I have with other people. And we have a whole big section of the pantry that's just shared items. And it's things like

huge containers of oats or spices, things that, you know, one person is not going to easily go through in a long period of time. And so I think that that's been kind of my favorite system so far. Do you think also you like the situation because...

Perhaps it speaks to the trust that is between the three of you.

I feel like some of my fondest memories from my apartment have been at the tiny little kitchen table we have in there, just sitting for hours and chatting. It's not everyone's dream to share a kitchen, but it is many people's reality, given the economics of housing in many parts of the world. So what are some of the silver linings? For me, sharing a kitchen is kind of this

I mean, maybe it sounds silly, but it is kind of this intimate thing because it's like that's outside of your room, potentially where you're spending the most time in a shared house. And so I think that's where you kind of get to know each other, you know, the good, the bad and the ugly. Yeah.

For me, it's the highlight of my day is coming home and sharing a meal with, you know, the people I live with. That hopefully is a silver lining for people is that even if this is not your first choice of living situation, it's ultimately, hopefully a great way to build relationships and yeah, have a kind of a sanctuary where you can share and connect with each other.

If someone offered you a place of your own with a kitchen of your own, what would you do? I honestly don't know if that's what I want. I think just having a kitchen to myself and only cooking for myself, I think it would be sort of a sad experience for me. I think I'm pretty committed to sharing that with others. Anna Rodriguez. Back in the student flat in Preston, I asked the same question.

If you had a choice and someone said, look, here's a place of your own with a kitchen of your own, would you take it? No. I'd get lonely. Yeah. Aren't you lucky to have found it? You'll be fine just so. Dinner's ready? Dinner's ready. It's out of the oven and served up in moments. Thank you.

Thanks, Mary. You're so welcome. Yeah, I made the salad. Let's not forget, guys. I chopped up... This is amazing. This is the best salad I've ever put in my mouth.

Thank you and bon appétit to Mary, Sasha, Leah, Rosie and Kieran. And thanks to everyone we spoke to for today's programme. What's your experience of sharing a kitchen? For a future programme, we'd love to hear your stories about cooking alongside your partner. Do please email thefoodchain at bbc.co.uk. From me and the rest of the team, Hannah Bewley, Nina Pullman and Elizabeth Mai, thanks for listening and join us again next week.

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