- Just do it. Start cooking. Make a giant fuck off meal and serve it to the whole clan. Odds are, they’ll accept a free feed. Repeat this until your flatties feel as if they have to return the ‘favour’ and then boom, you’ve guilt tripped them a system of mutual exchange.
- Use reverse psychology. Act unimpressed by their meals. Say shit like “Whatever you do, don’t make that for the flat” or “Please don’t join the flat meals, a bowl of shit warmed up would be better then what you’ve cooked”. Challenge them to prove your opinion of their cooking wrong.
- Round up the troops for a flat shop. Convince them that buying bulk is the way to go. Now, everyone has the exact same stuff. Offer to make a few extra portions of what you’re already cooking, using the shared ingredients. At this point it’s way too hard to separate each item. So for convenience, the best thing to do is share.
- Begin tampering with their daily horoscopes. Leave subtle messages that encourage sharing and coming together over food. Become the universe that is speaking to them through their star signs. Keep tampering until the message has worked its way into a special place in their heart, and they suggest starting shared meals.
- Make a flat roster. Set up a timetable of everyone's job, like ‘Robert’s night to vacuum the yard’ or ‘Ali’s day to feed the fish.’ Simply slip in ‘Carols cook night’ and let the chore wheel do the dictating for you.
- Pick a cause and stage a peaceful protest. Fast until peace is restored with a welcoming communal meal.
- Become a cooking genius. Go full Gordon Ramsay up in the kitchen and have the beautiful aroma of your food speak for itself. Have your flatties salivating like never before, desperate to get a taste. Repeat weekly until they beg to be a part of your meal.
- Start slow. Suggest making a meal to celebrate a flatties’ birthday. Next, slide in with another reason to celebrate, like you dodged another flat inspection, or Josh learned how to tie his shoes. Repeat these celebratory meals until they are practically every week. Just like that, the whole flat is having a shared meal, without even realising it!
- Get Big Tech to do it for you. Routinely steal everyone's phones and talk into them repeatedly about ‘flat meals’, ‘sharing food’ and ‘communal eating’. Over time, Siri will catch on and begin bombarding your flatmates with advertisements to do with flat meals. Once this programming is complete, your flatmates won’t be able to think about anything apart from flat meals.
Cultivate a Pavlovian response. Eventually, your flatmates will get sick of the same soy sauce flavoured stir-fry, and want a taste of your flavour. Just before plating up, sneak small amounts of MDMA into the food. This will really get them hooked into your cook night, and they’ll immediately be on board with shared meals forever.