#515. Taking a sympathy scoop from the dish no one eats at the pot luck.
Apr 6th by JonAs I mentioned last week, I’m OK with using the phrase “Pot Lucks.” I’m sure the dictionary definition of luck is something like, “a word meaning lottery and gambling and all varieties of awfulness that make the Holy Spirit want to punch you,” but I just can’t bring myself to say “Pot Blessings.”
Luck is a more accurate description of the food you’ll find at church events, where everyone brings their own dish. They’re not all blessings. Some of them are gross. Upon tasting them your mouth does not think to itself, “I have just been blessed.” It might think, “Wow, I have just been cursed.” And now you’ve got a “Pot Cursing” on your hands, which seems like something a drunk crock pot would start doing if you bumped into it and spilled its drink at a nightclub.
My favorite part of a Pot Luck is the way that the grossest dish is so quickly identified. No one ever calls out the taste offender, but early on in the event, people start to recognize the outcast dish. Even after only a few people have gone through the food line, it becomes easier and easier to see which casserole will be the head engineer on the gross train tonight. It’s not that it won’t be touched or completely ignored. Most of the time, a tiny bit will be scooped out, indicating one of two things:
1. The first person through the line could not determine what was hidden under some gooey, potentially delicious layer of cheese and had to crack the outer hull of the casserole to determine that something funky was lurking within.
2. The first person actually tasted a tiny bit and moved on as fast as they could with as little as they could.
And since this is a Christian event, your heart breaks for this person. Don’t make eye contact with the dish. Love your neighbor by moving down the line. Or at most, give it a sympathy scoop, heaping extra onto your plate, and throw it away later when no one is looking. There’s nothing to see here, folks.
But what if it’s yours? What if you’re the owner of the dish? What if you brought it? Oh, the shame, the food-related shame you must be feeling right now. Fear not, I have a few ways you can lessen this daunting experience:
1. Stir it up
If fewer than seven people have gone through the line, there’s still a chance you can trick some people into thinking your dish is delicious. The best way is to take the Bob Marley approach and stir it up. Make it look like lots of people have been digging around in there, scooping out big helpings of awesome.
2. Distance yourself from the dish
If more than seven people have gone through the line, but less than 14, stirring won’t work. Instead, start to distance yourself from the dish by saying things like, “Oh look, someone brought Tuna Caper Strawberry Jam Surprise! I think I’ll try some.” In addition to getting another scoop out of your dish, you technically have not lied. Someone did bring that dish. It just happens that someone was you.
3. Leave a man behind
If everyone has gone through the line once and it’s obvious your dish is the shame-garnering meal, be prepared to do something the Marines would never do–leave a man behind. Don’t reclaim the dish. Leave it behind so that the stink of the shame doesn’t spill on you when it’s the end of the night and people are probably carrying out their empty dishes. Go ahead and say a whispered farewell to your dish if you need to because it’s about to enter the bowels of the church kitchen, never to be seen again. “I’ll miss you. You were such a good dish to me. I’m sorry I cooked that in you. That was so unfair to you. Don’t look at me that way. I’m sorry.” And then just get in your car and never look back.
I had a fourth, much more violent solution that involved turning over the table that all the food is sitting on so that every dish instantly becomes gross as it cascades upon the floor, but my wife felt that was too violent. I argued that this was exactly the same thing Jesus did when he cleared the temple with a whip, but apparently the word “casserole” does not appear in the New Testament. (I could have sworn it did.)
Comments
Okay, about the popcorn… I was a freshman in college. I had been going to these monthly pot lucks without bringing anything and was feeling a little convicted. The next one came and I was SOOO HUNGRY and I seriously didn’t have any money to buy regular food. I searched my dorm room for anything edible and I found one microwave popcorn packet. Yes, that is what I offered. I know, I took so much more.
wv: rookingd–”Wow! That new popcorn casserole is ‘rookin g(oo)d’!!”
Is there anyone out there like me who basically goes through the line at a potluck to get some of what I brought myself because I know it will be safe, or at the very least it won’t have a side helping of cat hair?
Annie K, “jello salad with carrots” – that made me throw up in my throat a little. Eww. That’s as bad as the dreaded pear with cheese and a dollop of mayonnaise.
kj, “PotYUCK” – Ha ha! That’s good.
Folks, it’s not “Pot Luck” it is actually “Potty Lick.”
I don’t cook and therefore it is always a store bought item for me to bring to these things. So I play it super safe and bring plastic wear and napkins.
I can’t believe no one said anything about the Bob Marley reference! Stir it up! Good one! Love it!
Katdish and Stacey, let me just clarify that even though I married a Mennonite, I don’t necessarily cook like one. You will NEVER see a recipe for Jello with carrots on my cooking blog or served at my house. Some things are better left in my husbands past.
I once thought I’d eaten rotten meat at a church dinner, turns out it was kidney from a steak and kidney casserole. Nice.
Steak and kidney casserole?! Wow. Suddenly jello and carrots doesn’t sound so bad.
Also I must add that we had some awesome church dinners when I lived in Louisiana, except the annual wild game potluck. No thanks!
Why is everyone hating on the jello with carrots? I was always kind of fond of that…
I love Stir It Up! The song, not the save-the-dish move.
This is why you should only bring things you are SURE will be hits to pot lucks.
Anyone for Pot Providence? (giggle)
michele
Just put your “casserole” in a disposable pan…that way if it’s bad…you don’t have to “leave a man behind.”
BTW I have a cousin who forever thought casserole was pronounced “cusserole.” We always said a “cusserole” is a casserole that is so bad it makes you cuss…just a little bit!
I live in Vegas. We call our church potlucks buffets.
The scary thing is that all this is true. At potluck church dinners all around the world.
SCL #516. Telling stories of the most exotic thing we’ve eaten on a mission trip.
Well, I’ve been here for too many years for most people to compete with me. But let me just say this… The other day I had roasted rat on a stick (country rat–we would never eat a city rat) and it is pretty darn good. It tops dog any day!
Guilty as charged. I managed to burn a crock-pot stew. How does someone burn food in a crock-pot? It’s a slow cooker for Pete’s sake. The stew was gross, really gross.
wv: pactors=pastor/actor. Only the best pactors actually eat their sympathy scoops.
I hope I’m not repeating another person’s idea but I have an idea for another strategy.
Wait until someone has left…Watch for someone to forget to take their dish home or someone who didn’t have an actual dish because they were lame and brought a bag of chips or something. Wait a little bit and then say:
“Oh, the Smith’s forgot to take home their dish! I’m going right by their house tomorrow. I’ll go ahead and take it to them.”
By doing this you’ve not only distanced yourself from the offending dish but you don’t have to lose your wares. And hey! You’ll get bonus points for being kind and thoughtful!
Be careful who you do this to as there may have been other people who noticed what that person brought and well…if that happens, “ride em cowboy”.
Eww!! I’m so not a fan of potlucks at all. When we have a Church potluck, I make sure that I ask people that I know (and trust) what they made, and then I scour the table for those things described. You never know if people wash their hands, or that the mayo in the potato salad is past it’s date. Then there was the time I was at a meeting with the women that is the head of our dinner ministry, and she said something about how she hates to waste food so much that if she has bologna and it has a little mold on it, she just scrapes it right off and eats it anyway *insert gagging here*. I’m just thankful I’ve never been sick enough to have a meal delievred. I wonder if the death rate is higher in thoses people that have had a meal delivered…
I even make sure I bring more then one thing so I’m not stuck eating the one thing I brought just in case there are no “safe” foods around.
Of course, then you have people who are like “oh you have to try what I brought, it’s a new recipe. That’s what husbands are there to do. He will often take one for the team!
I guess that’s why we pray over our food. You just have to pray extra hard at a potluck…
Food on a mission trip is a whole different post….We were in Haiti at the mission, and a guy pulled up and took about 8 chickens and threw them to the ground (to break their legs) then carried them in. The kids cheered and there stood all the Americans…shell shocked….2 days later…some GREAT chicken…still a yuck factor…..
I once brought homemade meatballs in a crockpot to a moms-and-tots pot luck. They were still slightly pink inside, but I figured an hour or so bubbling away at church would finish them off. Not so; imagine my shock, dismay, and utter humiliation when the head mom announced from the microphone that the meatballs were undercooked and everyone should beware. All the pregnant and nursing moms, nervous of -I don’t know- botulism, immediately dumped the meatballs onto side plates or shuffled them off to the edge of the plate (Siberia). The moms at my own table were so nice, gamely eating them for my sake, but you could tell it was a labour of love.
My Sweet Potato Banana Pie… a story in itself…. was looked upon with disgust when I handed it to the lady in charge of the pot luck… she never served it, yet it was never found after the dinner either. My guess, she tasted it and couldn’t stop… reality, dumpster.
Was a youth pastor in the deep south and moved in as a “yankee” and there was no sympathy scooping, every woman in the church brought me a scoop of what she had made. Literally would have 2-3 plates of food around me.
When I was doing a mission trip in Middlesborough (Northern England), they called potlucks, “Faith Lunch”. I thought that was appropriate seeing as you had to have faith that there was going to be enough…
To my dismay, the proud people of England are no different than us. There were dishes that were avoided like the plague. I also found that there was quite a disproportionate amount of keish (not sure if that’s how you spell it, but it’s that egg goolasch baked in a pie crust)…not my favorite. I had dry ham and crusty bread…mmmm.
Ha! Thanks for another great entry! When I lived in Illinois, our church had potluck at least once a month. We called it “Afterglow”, us kids joked and said some of it was still glowing after a nuclear disaster…
I wonder if some people see potluck as an opportunity to clean out their cupboards…
JOOTT!!
Just take the unwanted dish to a campus ministry at the nearby college. It will be eaten, I promise
I am surprised that so many with obvious culinary skills would hesitate to try new dishes, even if the palate does not agree with your own. Or, maybe I enjoy these delights because my own kitchen is a laboratory according to my spouse. I use recipes as simply guidelines to experiment and create my own version.
And by the way, the definition of luck is Laboring Under Correct Knowledge, the pot is simply the container. Be Brave! Take three tastes of the unknown!
Can’t imagine a church dinner with bad food! From tuna hot dish to shrimp n grits, I must be in the right church ’cause it’s always all good!
I am laughing so hard I literally have tears coming out of my eyes…
It’s not the church pot lucks that get me but the FAMILY dinners! Why two of my sisters in law both think green bean casserole is their signature dish or something. come on! It’s mushroom soup and canned green beans! blah! We have a very large family but no one needs two helpings of that! Thank goodness for the kids -all my brothers can cook!
What really takes the cake is when you also sit down to eat, and you see all the people around you with either
1) None of your “blessing” on their plate OR
2) A big pile of uneaten “blessing” on their plate
And then to kick it up a notch, someone has to INSULT the “blessing” in. your. presence.
Not that that’s happened to me, no.
I Love Love Love your blog. I have laughed myself to tears. You need to write a book with all of your posts. Ya know, it could be a bathroom reader even!
God Bless!
I just happened on your blog for the first time today. (I think it was through a twitter link.) This post is hilarious, I really am laughing out loud! The comments are just as hilarious as the posts. I loved the comment from “Midnight Vagabond” about how people say “just” when praying.
wv: knists-what occurs when you get your knickers in a twist.
Yeah normally on these little events- I just bring my own food. haha.
Justin don't you want to go through the line?
No thanks I brought sub-way.
ha
My mother always grumbles about the meager contribution of a certain rice dish that is a popular "contribution." It's just white rice cooked in beef broth with the tiniest amount of chopped onions. 1.6 servings in a tiny little casserole dish, ingredients costing probably 84 cents. It's cheap, easy, doesn't serve many people, doesn't taste very good, few people actually GET any on their plates, but somehow it keeps showing up — sometimes there will be multiple entries of this popular dish!