Every holiday is celebrated with potluck in my circle of friends. This suggests a certain level of good luck – luck that my friends are all very good cooks, or at least competent enough with a bagged salad. The people in my life, who I have shared countless potlucks with over the last five or so years, are endlessly generous with their contributions of money and time and love – feeding others matters as much to them as it does to me. There is a wonderful reciprocity to the very act of potluck-ing.
Competition is baked into the potluck, even if we don’t admit it. Baking for my friend Carter’s weekly garden parties last summer sharpened my baking skills like nothing else has. Every week, I wanted to craft something new and interesting. Peeling the tin foil off of a pan to reveal my dessert of the week built this sense of performance into baking, soliciting praise and excitement. It became my way to feel important to the group, to distinguish myself, to do what I have realized I so often do – seek to earn love via food.
Once everyone has laid their dish on the table, we take photos and quietly evaluate. Which one is most beautiful? Which one has the most takers on the first round as we load up our plates? And after the plates are empty and sitting in the sink, which dish gets the most praise? What was worth going back for seconds?
This is not what a potluck typically connotes. Usually, the word brings to mind church picnics, probably in the south or the midwest or the prairies, eating mayo-heavy casseroles. Always casseroles. The origin story of using canned soup in recipes (rather than simply eating it as soup) dates back to the Depression, which is when potlucks as we know them really emerged in North America. These histories – potlucks, casseroles, the Depression, canned soup – all twine together.
When I think of potlucks, no matter how many I’ve attended, I still picture a very specific scene when I hear the word. Plastic tables line the church gym, buckling under the weight of potato salad, squares, and white buns. Condiments streak the table, globs of ketchup and mustard that missed the hamburgers they were meant for as kids, eager to eat after a long sermon, race outside with their paper plate.
If you contribute to enough potlucks, there will be times when your dish totally misses the mark, and you must cart your own leftovers home. No one liked your sweet potatoes; the casserole was missing something. Why does this hurt so much? Why does it feel like being rejected? Years of bartending and barista jobs should have inured me to this specific kind of rejection. But who cares if some stranger thinks my espresso martini is too sweet? The opinion of strangers doesn’t really bother me.
But someone skipping over my dish as they load up on seconds at the Thanksgiving potluck? It’s not criticism, but it is rejection. And I’m still no good at handling rejection. One is supposed to adjust to all kinds of rejection in this world – dating, job hunting, creating art – everything we do to find meaning and purpose delivers some rejection along the way. If you’re never rejected, you probably aren’t taking risks – you’re probably not doing anything at all. Even if you play it safe, you can’t please everyone.
So I try to contribute something memorable that I know at least one other person will love. They aren’t for everyone (which is also the benefit of a potluck) but for the person that does love a tart peach cobbler with flaky sea salt sprinkled on top, I’ve created a memorable moment of joy. Sorry, but no one will remember your vanilla cake. It’s better to follow your own delight.
It’s so difficult to internalize the same truth in art. Especially if you hope to get paid in some way – impressing granting bodies, editors, curators, programmers and producers with your artistic vision is a lot harder than thrilling your friends with a plate of shortbread. But maybe that’s more a problem of the audience than the nature of selling art. Maybe it’s both. Maybe one just needs to find the cultural gatekeepers who share their taste for bitter, salty and sour.
I take pride in hosting, in the identity of hostess. This is a big thing for a lot of women, but I think it’s especially a thing for Evangelical women. Growing up, we spoke of hosting, of hospitality, as a spiritual gift, something one could be blessed with. I’m not a preternaturally gifted host, ordained by God to bake cookies and serve decaf coffee, but hosting does offer a taste of the divine. So too does adding your serving bowl to the counter, making space for every dish. It has a kind of early church spirit, even when the potluck isn’t held on Easter. We give what we have and share it together. In church we would call this fellowship – these days I call it hanging out, but it does have the effect of fellowship. Gathering with others we share something in common with – these days the group may be divided on belief in God, but there is a uniting belief in caring for and feeding one another, making space for each other in our homes, taking turns washing dishes and pouring more wine.
The potluck, no matter how distracted one might get by the pressure to perform, is a communal expression of love, trust and care
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