Gone are the days when getting a home cooked meal meant waiting for the next school break to go back home to visit family. Now, the family kitchen is just off Broadway Street.

John Bushnell, biology junior, along with psychology junior Wolfgang Klein and mass communication junior Christoph Dornemann, started cooking near-gourmet meals together their first Sunday back at school for the fall 2009 semester.

“We were all just sitting around and complaining about how abysmal the OR is on Sunday,” Klein said, “and one of my mottoes is if you’re gonna be rebellious, you might as well be productive while you’re at it.”

So the budding chefs kept cooking each week, finding a new kitchen to cook in each Sunday and gathering friends who ate their food each week. After some searching, they found English junior Louis McLaughlin, who offered the use of his kitchen in return for a free meal.

“It was in its infancy when he told me about it, so I offered a standard meeting place for the club,” McLaughlin said.

“If anyone’s been there from the beginning besides the leaders, it’s (McLaughlin),” Klein said.

Sunday Cook Day, as they call it, has grown over the past year to be a full-fledged weekly tradition at McLaughlin’s (and his roommates’) house.

“(My roommates) are pretty cool with it most of the time,” McLaughlin said. “They support it. It’s fun.”

The chefs meet to prepare their food in the second floor kitchen of Biever Hall every Sunday, before taking their fares to McLaughlin’s house on Zimple Street a few blocks from campus. And each week, mainly through word-of-mouth, students follow them there for the chance at an inexpensive home-cooked dinner.

“When people try the food, they’re usually amazed,” Dornemann said.

“I’m friends with the guys and they invited me over,” said Lauren Imwold, theatre freshman. “It’s a pretty easy walk from campus, and it’s really nice to get a meal that’s not from the OR on occasion.”

Each week sees anywhere between 10 and 15 people looking for a meal. The chefs ask that each person donate “what the meal is worth to you,” according to Bushnell, to cover the cost of ingredients each week.

If any profit is made one week, it goes into the next week’s fund to ensure that there will be no under-budgeted meals, which has happened before. The three lost roughly $150 after cooking a Thanksgiving feast — 35 people showed up, but with almost 15 different dishes, it wasn’t enough to cover everything.

“We were considering doing it every other week, then we finally just took two weeks off and organized everything,” Bushnell said. “Now we will not settle. We’re trying to not waste any food, trying not to use plastic bags.”

On March 21, Sunday Cook Day had its most successful turnout since the project started, with a menu consisting of catfish with Vietnamese sauce, bok choy with ginger and hoisin sauce and jasmine rice.

“We broke even!” Dornemann said, laughing. “It was a huge deal.”

The chefs want their project to be more than just cooking, Bushnell said. Though there are only three cook days planned for the rest of the semester, they have big ideas in store.

“Besides feeding people good food, we want to teach people how to be good cooks,” Dornemann said.

Just last week, they hosted a pie-making workshop in honor of March 14, also known as Pi Day.

“Four people (there) never cooked before, and they all ended up having really great pie crusts,” Dornemann said.

A guest chef night is planned featuring Orleans Room chef Steve Eskamire, affectionately known as Vegan Steve, who will be leaving Loyola at the end of the semester.

“We want to do an event next year for the whole cleaning staff,” Bushnell said.

The next hurdle the three chefs will face is getting chartered as a student organization in order to advertise more to the student body to gain interest.

“We know there are other really good cooks on campus who have a passion for food,” Dornemann said. “If they want to be a guest chef, learn, contribute … those are the people who are future members and leaders of the group.”

Each week’s menu and the location for Sunday Cook Day may be found on the Sunday Cook Day Facebook group.

Kevin Zansler can be reached at  [email protected]