Okay, here goes. I hate Potlucks. I know your mama says hate is a bad word; but I HATE potlucks. Really. I can’t get over it. I envision the innocent dishes placed on the communal table as having traveled from the grossest homes imaginable. So when an event pops up and someone chimes in with, “let’s have a potluck”; my internal voice murmurs, ”let’s not”. I’m not saying my house is spotless and sometimes the stacks of magazines ,mail, and (clean) folded laundry cause me to suffer from C.H.A.O.S. (Can’t Have Anyone Over Syndrome); but I am quite vigilant about my food prep area. I pay attention to cross contamination. Trust me, I’m vigilant. I always use separate cutting boards for meat and veggies. Always.
So let’s get back to the dreaded potluck situation. The holidays are here. Meaning it is prime potluck season. So at work, there is a plan for a huge Thanksgiving Potluck. So I was kind of avoiding the whole planning conversations until the dreaded moment came; a blanket email asking for responses to , “what are your bringing”? I squared my shoulders, took a big breath and typed these two words, “not participating”. Whew; what a relief. My mama, Sweetpea, also had a very strong reaction to potlucks. She said folks are wasting their time on all this cooking mess. Go to any potluck, she said, and see what disappears first; it’ll be the KFC, people will go for the store-bought stuff!
So let’s get back to the subject of why I hate potlucks. Wow. That’s getting easier to say; let’s do it again; “I hate potlucks’. The anti-potluck sentiment comes down to this. There are two distinct images I can’t shake: double dipping and hoarders. Too many times I have seen folks going through a potluck and I honestly feel that a crudités station is the most dangerous place at a party. I must have a radar for it; out of the corner of my eye I always seem to catch the folks who have just dunked their carrot or celery back into the dip AFTER they have already dunked , bitten and chewed on the same carrot or celery. Ugh! Gag! I know it is dramatic thinking. I own it. But I picture that innocent aluminum clad potluck dish as having its beginnings in a hoarder’s home. You know the ones you see on TV, where there is a goat’s trail that the person has to scoot sideways to get through the walls of trash. Picture this: precariously perched on the tippy edge of the counter where mountains of dirty pots , moldering food, and meandering cats have claimed their real estate is where the imagined potluck dish is being prepared. Blame it on an Oprah episode; where the lovely well-dressed lady sat in the audience and then her life was forever ruined by the featured clip of her hoarded home…and wasn’t she the one who was fighting and crying to keep the lone dirty sock so she could reuse it sometime in the future? Okay, so this is what I am picturing as the home of the potluck dish.
So yes, invite me to your home and I will gladly come and dine with you. I promise, I’ll be relaxed and do my best to be a sparkly guest. But there is something about bringing the dish out of the house that makes me cringe. Writing this I see that if I come into your home I can access the prep area and obviously, just the act of inviting folks into your home makes you a non-hoarder. So that’s it! I just had a breakthrough- I need to see where it (the dish) is prepared. Yep, that’s it. So go enjoy your potlucks, enjoy sharing your dishes, and please don’t fret about me; I’ll be chatting and happily munching on the chicken out of the bucket!
