POTLUCKS: A GUIDE FOR THE PERPLEXED

Comes now another season of potlucks, when entire tables are filled with dishes chosen by chance, all to be eaten or else left to age ungracefully. To help you survive another season, The Attic offers the following tips on potluck etiquette.

‍ ‍1.  When invited to a potluck, never ask “What can I bring?”  This is a grave offense allowing the host to rescind the invitation or place several folding chairs between you and the enchiladas.  At a potluck, a total lack of planning is the sine qua non (Latin for “Okay, everyone bring little meatballs.”)

‍ ‍2.  Calling friends to see what they’re bringing is also tres gauche (French for “zose stupeed Americans bring garbazh to dinner and call eet cuisine!“)  Risking that you’ll be the only one who brings peanut butter cellery sticks or else the tenth person to drag in deviled eggs is what potlucks are all about.

3.  Potluckers should never bring leftovers unless they are reborn through a generous use of Parmesan cheese.  Exceptions can be made for desserts, especially fruitcakes.  Veteran potluckers like to tell of a certain fruitcake that has turned up at more than a hundred potlucks nationwide during the last few years.  Some of you know just the fruitcake I mean.

4. Know which hosts allow tofu in their house and which don’t.  Ditto for quinoa.  Don’t abuse the privilege.  Friends don’t let friends drive with lukewarm quinoa in their laps.

5.  Never arrive at a potluck on time, especially if you bring lasagna.  Etiquette demands that the bearers of main dishes stumble in at least a half-hour after guests have had dessert, then spend twenty minutes figuring out the microwave.

6.  Never comment on the number of quiches on the table.  Remarks such as “Jeez, Quiche City,” and “Real men don’t eat two dozen quiches” are considered a major faux pas (Russian for “The French have all the best sayings about food.”)

7.  If you must salt the pasta salad, be discreet.  Retire to an upstairs bathroom or the bedroom of a kid gone off to college.  A colorful but tasteless pasta salad is mandatory at all potlucks and standing in the kitchen heaping salt on innocent Rotini is grounds for legal action in many states.

‍ ‍8.  If, after salting, the pasta salad still tastes like paste with chickpeas, it’s okay to dispose of it in a proper manner.  But never place any portion in: a cat’s dish, a printer, or behind one of those little ceramic houses people line up on window sills.  Instead, stuff the salad on a bookshelf where it won’t be discovered for years, or in a Play Station where it will be discovered the next day but the parents will thank you.

‍ ‍9.  If you break your plastic fork on a slab of underdone turkey, you have two choices.  You can instantly smother the broken tine in gravy or you can hide the entire fork in the nearest potted plant.  Never pick your teeth with the tine.  And don’t call attention to the problem by shouting, “In my house we don’t let the bird out of the oven until it stops gobbling!”  Such remarks are not in the potluck spirit of “whatever.” (Californian for “What’s all this kale doing here?”)

‍ ‍10.  Freedom of speech does not give you the right to shout “Elon Musk!” at a crowded potluck.

Now you have the rules.  Failure to observe them could result in your banishment from potlucks.  You would then be forced to dispose of all excess pasta salad and fruitcakes by feeding them to small forest animals.

‍ ‍Bon appetit (French for “Sacre bleu, another damn potluck tonight!”)