Julie Moore stirred a steaming pot of chicken tikka masala, while her 7-year-old daughter, Alaina, spread butter on a stack of naan flatbreads. A feast of Indian food was on the menu, but they were essentially operating as a delivery service on this bustling Tuesday night.

It was the Moore's weekly turn to cook for a three-family dinner club in Folsom. The rules go like this: Each family prepares a meal one night a week for the club's members. The meals are hand-delivered in plastic containers or picked up at the house.

On another night the families might share a meal of focaccia stuffed with chicken and peppers, or whip together enough French dip sandwiches to feed seven adults and nine kids. The idea's not about running some kind of suburban commune, but reinforcing a sense of community among neighbors and friends.

"It's great because I only have to cook a couple nights a week," said Moore, with a kitchen full of neighborhood kids and her own two daughters. "We were all good friends before we ever did this, and this helps us to connect."

The dinner club started seven years ago when Moore and some other neighborhood friends all were pregnant. A few members have come and gone over time, but a core trio remains: Moore, Karen Haena – who lives across the street – and Erin Henderson. No one's kept track of how many aluminum trays or yards of plastic wrap they've gone through since their dinner club commenced.

They all know the feeling of trying to squeeze in dinner between driving around to soccer practices and helping with homework. Their days are busy enough. Moore runs a promotional items business from her home and teaches marketing at the University of Phoenix, Haena operates an in-home day-care facility, and Henderson teaches communications and writing at the University of Phoenix.

Nobody gets too picky about what's being served because nothing tastes sweeter than a little relief from cooking dinner a few times a week.

"We've had weeks where everyone cooks Italian," said Moore, with a chuckle. "In the beginning we wondered if we should have rules, but we decided not to worry about everyone's tastes."

No one ever intended for this dinner club to be a kind of cooking competition, to see who could one-up the others or wow everyone with exotic recipes. In a pinch, grabbing enough pizza to feed three families, or maybe a slew of tacos from Rubio's, works just fine on a dinner club night.

For the Indian dinner that Moore and her daughter recently prepared, the samosas came frozen from a nearby Indian market, and they added some simple steamed rice as a side.

"You can't worry too much about being perfect and gourmet," said Moore. "Just make the food you like, but make more of it. That way, even if you're busy you can go and have a healthy dinner."

The night Moore made Indian, Brian and Karen Haena could really use the extra help. One of their daughters was undergoing surgery. Moore dropped off some food at the hospital for Brian and Karen and saved some for their children Patrick and Brooke, who were being looked after by Karen's father and niece across the street.

As that night's dinner club cooking continued at the Moores' home, the policy was very open-door. Neighborhood kids came and went, painting their faces in the family room or riding electric cars on the sidewalk. Denise Appino, a former member of the dinner club, dropped by with her granddaughter Whitney to visit.

It's a slice of Folsom that feels especially wholesome.

"This is so old-school," said Appino. "You can drive through a lot of neighborhoods and not see any people out. But this is a combination of households where it all just works."

At 5:30 p.m. Erin Henderson stepped into the kitchen to pick up her dinner club bounty. She lives about a mile away with her husband and three children and is the vegetarian of the bunch, hence the tofu that's included with the meal.

"Some friends of mine tried to do a dinner club and it didn't work that well," said Henderson. "You all have to be kind of tight. But it's not like we eat together three days a week."

"That would be too chaotic," added Henderson's husband, Bryan Serinese.

Dinner club meals always are prepared to-go, so out came the containers for green beans and a mango chutney sauce. The steaming samosas were pulled from the oven, and the kitchen filled with a spicy smell. Henderson's meal was packed in a paper grocery bag, while the Haena family's portion was placed in a picnic basket.

Moore walked the dinner across the street.

"It's a unique neighborhood," said Moore. "For every life event, there's all these households chipping in. We all just know each other so well."

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