Potluck-a-licious
I love me a good potluck dinner. Lucky us, there’s a potluck dinner as part of a friend’s wedding tomorrow. I am bringing 2 lasagnas. My recipe is pretty top secret.
But I am not really here to talk about top secret recipes or lasagna. I wanted to talk about potlucks.
I’ve taken the liberty of compiling what I consider to be some of the best reasons to love potluck dinners:
The abundance of food. A potluck supper is a lot like a buffet. Except it isn’t Chinese food. You can take as little or as much as you want. You can go back for seconds and there will probably be more there than when you went for firsts.
The variety. You can take a bit of everything, go for the old favorites like perogies, lasagna, meatballs, etc. You can effectively eat food from almost every corner of the world if you have the right mix of potluck food-makers.
The intrigue. There’s always going to be a few dishes where you aren’t quite sure what exactly it is, or even what is in it. There is something about taking a scoopful of mystery casserole, or trying the jellied concoction layered with meat that adds to the excitement and experience of potlucking it. Maybe you’re into the mystery desserts – although rarely can you go wrong there.
The pride. This is probably going to make me sound so snobby and (gasp!) conceited but I am going to be honest here. I actually love to make outstanding, even if its difficult or complicated, dishes to bring to potlucks. I want to look impressive. I want people to be excited to eat the food I bring. There is nothing sweeter than taking home a completely cleaned out dish which was empty long before the crowd could go back for seconds.
So tell me, what is your signature potluck recipe?
Make your own cookbook – I did
We have a friend getting married this weekend. I am totally looking forward to the wedding. We haven’t had an opportunity to get our dance on in a very long time. Last week I attended the wedding shower for the bride.
I don’t want to brag or anything but I think my gift was the bestest ever.
I made a personalized, customized cookbook with my very own recipes (and a few from the future mother-in-law) using lulu.com. The book turned out amazing. I was so thrilled with the results.
Here’s a bit of how it worked out for me.
First off, I came up with the idea a bit late in the game. I should have attempted creating the cookbook sooner than 1 week before the shower. Even so, after spending some long hours in a row to get the book done in time to publish and ship the result was pretty spectacular.
I had some troubles figuring out the images when creating the book. It’s not that it was the fault of the lulu software at all. It was purely user dumbness, or the lack of not reading simple directions. Once I got the images figured out the book creation was quite smooth. They have specific templates for cookbooks which made it even easier to create.
Because of my late start I had to choose a faster shipping method, which cost quite a bit more than I expected to pay. But, it was well worth the extra cost since the book arrived the day before the shower, in time for me to oogle it and show it off to my friends before wrapping it up as a gift.
I highly recommend using Lulu.com for your cookbook creation projects. The cool thing with Lulu is that you can actually sell your books there too. I haven’t looked into that a whole lot at this point but for those serious foodies out there that might be a neat option.
For your viewing pleasure…a picture of me with my first ever in print cookbook ‘Food That Tastes Good’.
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