A Christmas Potluck Tale...

Status: It's now 3 degrees F. outside. Looks like I'm driving the kids to the bus stop today again. Oh, and we're supposed to get MORE snow! I'm turning cartwheels as I type...Oh, and HAPPY 6th BIRTHDAY THING THREE!!

A reader emailed me yesterday and asked me why I was being so hard on Potluck food in my last post. So, let me explain:
It really started in the early nineties with a story my Mother in Law told me about her church Christmas Potluck:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
MIL and her good friend were in charge of the food for the Christmas Program. They opted for Roast Beef, baked potato, steamed peas and a roll. Nice dinner, right?

Only they planned on having enough food for 100 people, and 150 showed up.

They were in the kitchen, doling out plates to the servers as fast as they could, and lo and behold, they started to run out of Roast Beef. Yet the servers kept coming and asking for full plates. They began to get desperate. What to do? What to do?

Then it came to them. And what they did next, they both swore never to divulge to anyone, and take the secret to their graves. (But my MIL, bless her, can't keep a secret to save her life, and ten years later, she was telling me all about it, unknowingly putting me off Church potlucks forever...)

So what did they do? They began taking the PARTIALLY EATEN old Roast Beef off of the DIRTY plates that were coming back to the kitchen, and plopping it on the NEW plates of food.

And no, I'm not kidding. MIL said it took up to three dirty plates of half-eaten Roast Beef to make up one plate, but they scrambled and filled the plates with the old Roast Beef as fast as they could. They ended up having enough for everybody, and those poor souls in the dining hall never knew the truth.
And of course while they were switching out old gross Roast Beef and giving it a makeover on a new plate, they were in complete stitches over it, and eventually tears, because they thought it was so funny. Little did the Church People know that they were getting Someone Else's partially eaten Roast Beef.

THE END.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Now, granted, this debacle happened in the early eighties, when no one had any Germs (you know what I mean) but STILL.
It sicked me out so badly, now, I won't eat at Church Potlucks. I've been in some of these people's houses, and I've SEEN their kitchens. It's called the"I-Have-Lots-Of-Kids-And-I-Therefore-Have-Sticky-Counters" Syndrome.
And as much as I love you, I'm not going to eat the cookies you plopped on those counters out of the oven.

This is why I don't like Potlucks. I might consider eating the food if it's served right out of a crockpot, (that is still TURNED ON) but that's it.
Sorry, I don't know where the food has been, and that scares the jeebies out of me.

Can you fault me? :-)