Life on my own #40: Potlucks

I love church potlucks. I don’t have any food allergies or standard health problems (like diabetes… yet) that preclude my eating whatever I like, or whatever looks adventurous. So I enjoy myself hugely at these get-togethers.

Last week was Missions Conference at church — one of my favorite weeks of the year. We heard from international workers in eastern Europe and sub-Saharan Africa.

And we ate a lot of food.

For the Sunday night poluck — a pretty standard affair — I made some crabmeat casserole. It’s my favorite casserole, but it makes a full-size 8”x11” pan, or a good 2-quart casserole dish. (Or something like that. It was a big casserole dish anyway.) If I made it for myself, I’d be eating it for about two weeks.

That is reason #2 I love church potlucks. I can make my favorite casserole and only eat as much as I need for one meal; my friends take care of the rest. Sure enough, the casserole dish was cleaned out by the end.

Monday night was soup night. The church I attend here in Indiana has this funny tradition. Anybody who has them will bring those oversized muffin tins… and serve themselves a little bit of what, six different kinds of soup? That way they can have a little of everything. I couldn’t tell you how many muffin tins I saw come out that night. And one couple even brought small soup mugs grouped three apiece in pie pans — yet another way to accommodate the quest for a little of everything. (Must please these cooks, you know.) Me, I just went with a little paper bowl and had some delicious-smelling chili.

For soup night, I signed up to bring bread. And I made it using some new yeast and my bread machine. It turned out splendidly! (I did have leftovers from that; in fact, I believe I finally finished those leftovers about two days ago. Before they molded. That’s the important part.)

And Tuesday night was dessert night. For this one, we all ate supper elsewhere and brought only a dessert to church. I made a gargantuan dish of Dirt Pudding. Mmmmmm.

I was not the only poor soul to make dirt putting, hoping it would all disappear. Therefore, I brought about 25% of it back home (even after pawning a good bit off onto my high school friend’s family). So what’s to be done, you ask? I certainly can’t eat it all myself.

Enter — the coworkers.

Wednesday I toted the dish into the break room refrigerator and told as many of the other newsroom writers I saw that there was some dirt pudding in the fridge — please, eat it.

It was gone before suppertime.