Potluck Panic

Potluck dinners give me panic attacks. This is because I have no clue how to cook for crowds. I had an “incident” in my youth and subsequently developed a disorder that makes me overcompensate by fixing enough to feed the population of a small town.

Women who cook for families often comment to me, “It must be SO difficult to cook JUST for two!” Sometimes I wonder if they are just rubbing it in that they have kids and I don’t. “Not at all,” I reply, “I’ve been cooking for two for 37 years!” It’s true. I know exactly how much food to prepare for our meals. If I buy a pound of salmon, for example, I know we’ll eat about ¾ of it for dinner and I’ll get my lunch out of it the next day.

Cooking for 4 is easy: just double the amount. I can even handle dinner for six with this same algorithm.

But faced with a crowd, my math goes all haywire. For a block party a couple of years ago, I made a hash brown potato and mushroom soup casserole that actually had land mass. It was the size of Texas and Oklahoma combined.  How the heck do you figure out how much 35 people will eat?  What if 40 show up? Or 50? As it turned out, it was plenty. I took most of Oklahoma home again.

Apparently I am not alone in this miscalculation. Everyone brings enormous quantities of food to potlucks. It’s as if we all think that OUR dish will be THE one that everyone will love so much that they’ll dive in and come back for seconds. We seem to carry no memory of past potlucks where, with 35 dishes of food on the table, no one can possibly manage more than a sample of each unless they’re going for the Guinness World Record for Biggest Serving of Cabbage and Ramen Noodle Salad at a Picnic. Someone brought a huge roasting pan full of steamed broccoli to our street’s block party last weekend. Who brings broccoli? To go with hot dogs. Anyway, I don’t think I saw a single person with broccoli on their plates. The whole pan was barely touched. Maybe because it was broccoli. In any case, I think we all bring unreasonable quantities to these events because we’re afraid of the scorn other women will heap upon us if we don’t demonstrate that we can put out a decent Church Supper-sized entrée to feed the multitudes.  

Which brings me to the “incident.”  It was 1980. I was a young bride in my 20s, married only three years. Ken was working at a theatre in Vancouver, British Columbia where they had commissioned  Tennessee Williams to write a play. What’s more, there was going to be a party at a board member’s house and we were invited! Holy Cats! I was going to meet Tennessee Williams, icon of the American theatre! The man who’s “Glass Menagerie” ignited my love of literature! I was a nervous wreck! But it got worse. The board member, a woman 20 years my senior, called me a few days ahead of the party. “Would you be able to make something to bring?” she asked. I wasn’t sure but thrilled to be asked and I said I would try. For some reason, our host had decided that, being a Southern gentleman, Mr. Williams might enjoy Chili Con Carne, which was an odd choice seeing as how he was from Mississippi. Anyway, could I make a big pot of chili? Well, ok. She didn’t specify how much a "big pot" was, but did say that two other women were also assigned this main course dish. Normally I cooked what for us would be a “big chili quantity” in a thin, 2-quart tin pot with a Bakelite handle; one pound of ground beef, diced green peppers and onions, a can of tomatoes and a can of kidney beans. Barely any spice. Neither of us likes spice. I made my chili and took it, pot and all, as instructed, to the party. Our host was flabbergasted. “THAT’S what you call a big pot?” she shouted at me, which I thought was a little unkind. “It’s the biggest pot I own!” I replied, realizing I was way out of my depth when I saw the other two women had brought enormous stock pots full of spicy chili. She put all three pots out on the table.

I met Tennessee Williams. He shook my hand and I managed to choke out words something to the effect of how much I loved his plays. I might have paid more attention to the man, but my eyes were fixed over his shoulder at the table and the sight of my unseasoned chili in the 2-quart pot sitting pathetically between the two giants.

So, you see, that’s my excuse for tending toward overly generous quantities when called upon for crowd cooking. I now own two large stock pots.

I should have told Mr. Williams about my humiliation. He might have written a play about it. It could have been called, “Prat of a Tin Pot Goof.”