Why Potlucks Suck

So here's the problem with potlucks: if you don't make food assignments, you will end up with nothing but bags of chips and Great Value brand Oreos. Or worse. You might think I'm making this up, and I really wish I had taken a photo to prove it, but at a family reunion last year someone brought a jar of individually wrapped Slim Jims. And a gallon of milk. Milk! Not even chocolate milk. There was grape soda and regular milk and water to drink. That's it. And the food--well, let's just say Slim Jims weren't the scariest things on the table. I ate a roll, a few chips, and stopped at the Walker's on the way back through Price. It was scary.

At the last family reunion I went to--the one last week, not the one two weeks ago--I brought fresh, homemade Oatmeal Chocolate Chip cookies, aka The Best Cookies Ever. The other dessert? Zuchinni bread. Zuchinni bread. At a picnic. Yikes! There was one potato salad, two relish trays, and some baked beans which since my grandma made them you never know if there is dog hair in them or not. And that was pretty much it. Thank goodness my dad had just stocked up on Circle V steaks (mmm....steaks), and my brother Mike and I only slightly argued over which was a better seasoning, Onera or Montreal Steak, ending up settling for mixing the two together. And I brought some Lea and Perrins--which reminds me, that's at my Dad's house still. Good thing we're having chicken tonight--I can't eat a steak without Lea and Perrins. But I digress. One of my cousins brought turkey burgers. Turkey burgers! Ack...it looked like they were eating an albino.

But the worst potluck ever was at the end of a weeklong reunion on my husband's side. It had already been a tough week. All my brother-in-law did was watch I Dream of Jeannie. The condo had cable, and the Olympics were on, and he watched DVDs of I Dream of Jeannie. There are only 3 episodes of I Dream of Jeannie. The one where Jeannie gets jealous, the one where Jeannie gets the Major in trouble, and the other one where Jeannie gets the major in trouble. That's it. But we're talking about potlucks. There was already one potluck that week, where I brought some freshly baked cookies (albeit not from scratch since we were in Estes Park, CO and my stand mixer is in Payson), and my sister-in-law brought blue jello shots with swedish fish in them (yes, we did have a giggle fest and considered adding "special ingredients" but decided not to since they were for children, after all), and that was dessert. Someone brought a bowl of a pasta salad from a box that makes enough for 4 people. That was the only thing my daughter would eat. This wasn't the worst meal.

The worst was the final night when everyone threw together whatever they had. In the spirit of things, I contributed leftover breadsticks, grapes, carrots, chips and salsa. If I had remembered, I would have thrown in the Nutter Butters as well. Someone had Great Value Oreos. And Brent's uncle had been fishing all week, and he cooked the fish. There are two smells I can't stand without wanting/needing to hurl--fish and cinnamon. It was horrible. There were leftover salads, and someone decided to use up 2 dozen eggs by deviling them without paprika! I draw the line at deviled eggs without paprika. If you want to get fancy and put tarragon in them, that's one thing, but no salt, no pepper, no paprika deviled eggs--I thought they were going to scramble them. It was a disaster. We went back to our condo and ate dinner again.

I have one more reunion to go to this year. The same one that had Slim Jims last year. I haven't decided what I'm going to bring, but I'm not going to try too hard.