Potluck World

NTB, but I am also a Taste of Home subscriber, courtesy of my mom. This magazine featuring "timeless recipes from trusted home cooks" brings me no end of joy. The recipes and photographs are appealing, but the things that delight me about the magazine are a bit more intangible. The italicized blurbs that introduce most recipes conjure a world or kind of life that I am not yet living. The blurbs promise that your family will love the dish, your friends will beg for the recipe, your church group will ask for seconds, or, quite often, that the dish will be a "hit" at the next potluck you attend. The most recent issue includes a small feature on "Potluck Pointers," one of which, from Susan in North Dakota, is: "Whenever I'm asked to bring a punch to a potluck, I pack all of the ingredients I need in a cooler and assemble the drink there." Perhaps because I live in the city and not the suburbs (yet, but don't worry I will be there with bells on soon enough) or perhaps because my bubby is not even two yet, I am not invited to any potlucks or, if I am, they are not called potlucks. But I want to be. I want to experience a world where Susan's tip might be helpful to me. From where I stand now, I cannot fathom a situation where I am invited somewhere and asked to bring punch. I just can't. I hope it happens.

Next weekend, a friend and I are hosting "Wives Night Out" (though husbands and children are invited too). We've asked everyone to bring something to share, so I guess it is a sort of potluck, but not quite the same. We took a cooking class together last night and plan to debut some of our new recipes. I'll let you know if the pizettes, the shrimp stuffed with goat cheese and sundried tomato and wrapped in proscuitto, and the salmon salsa on pita chips are a hit or not. Until then, I'll flip through my Taste of Home and think about life in a potluck world and give thanks for the good food and good friends in my life.