Potlucks of the Damned

Is there anything worse than an invitation to a potluck?  Okay, lots of things. But potlucks are still high on Sophia's list of hateable trends. Truthfully, an invitation to a potluck should read, "come to a dinner party. We will provide shelter from the elements, you bring something homemade and delightful for everyone to eat. Oh, and if you're a single or divorced dad, just pick something up at the store, and we'll understand."  Potlucks are the last bastion of acceptable sexism--Sophia's husband never ever assumes that a potluck invitation has any implications for him beyond driving and eating. 

And the food!  Julia Child no doubt turns in her grave every time a potluck takes place. You know what it's like. Soggy noodles tossed into cold salads that always have One Inedible Ingredient. Like beets, or raisins, or cashews, or something. Alien Meats in earth-toned sauces. Strange variations on the Enchilada Theme, often miniaturized. Herbs that never taste right, like tarragon. Rubbery shrimp. And then, for the finale, some weirdly-textured dessert, often from the "bar cookie" family.

Tragically, potlucks have become ever more popular as we move into the new century. Sophia isn't sure why this is. The recession? A mass delusion of culinary skill perpetrated by the Food Channel? Anti-feminist backlash? Whatever the cause, it must be stopped. Seriously, potlucks are the Tool of Satan. It's just a short ethical hop from a potluck to a Black Mass.

Sophia gets roughly three potluck invitations every two months from the enthusiastic Room Mothers at Percival's alternative school. These potlucks invariably have things made with quinoa, which gives Sophia indigestion, and many, many amateurish Mexican, Thai, or Indian concoctions. Now, Sophia loves these cuisines. When made by real ethnic cooks, not moms with access to the Internet. Eating this food is like listening to some drunk person butcher your favorite song in a Karaoke bar.

Of course, the obligation to cook is the worst part of the whole potluck ordeal. Now, Sophia can cook. She is half Italian, half farm girl, so she can make a fabulous lasagna or, a kick-ass chicken pot pie, or, if the situation demands, an acceptable stroganoff.

Alas, none of these things is potluck-friendly. In fact, Sophia has gone through her entire repertoire of recipes and found only one that doesn't coagulate or gelatinize after sitting on a potluck table for several hours.

Hummus.

During her college years, Sophia was a hippie. Back in the 1970's, this was not the same thing as being an Alternative Person today.  For one thing, there was no consumerist angle. You didn't have to wear certain brands, drive certain cars, or shop at Whole Foods. Pretty much the only requirements were listening to cool music at high volumes, wearing faded jeans, and occasionally inhaling prodigious amounts of cannabis sativa.

Sophia learned to make her own hummus long before this item was available in the grocery store, or there were such things as Middle Eastern Markets. It is pretty good, but it's a hassle to make, and most people today don't see any purpose in making one's own hummus. The window to impress people with this particular recipe closed in 1990.

Of course, there is a performative aspect to the potluck dinner. Your potato salad, pasta salad, mystery dumplings or apricot bars are on display.  They will be judged, if only by how much is left at the end. If you have to take a nearly-full dish home with you, know that you have been found wanting in the eyes of the Evil Potluck Gods. Once, Sophia went to the trouble to make a lovely, healthy carrot cake out of the Tassajara Cookbook. Do you know this Hippie Classic? Before Moosewood or the Alice Waters Empire, there was Tassajara. It's some Zen retreat in California, where they follow the eightfold path and bake stuff.

Anyway, this cake was made in a bundt pan.  Sophia loves the artsy shape of things made in bundt pans, although she mostly likes to look at them in cooking magazines, while she waits to have her teeth cleaned. The cake was kind of heavy, as befits a Tassajara recipe--or any hippie recipe of that era. For some reason, Early Alternative Cuisine weighed a ton. You could plug an undersea oil leak with some of the breads and casseroles Sophia and her friends used to eat.

Sophia felt that she should try to impress the Alternative Moms by making something really healthy, so she made this cake. It looked gorgeous--the quintessence of bundt-ness. A perfect Platonic Ideal.

Except, no one touched it. She had to take this semi-divine cake home and throw it in the garbage, because of course she and her family weren't going to eat it. Alternative Carrot Cakes suck. The only kind Sophia and her family like are the sort you get in bakeries, where the carrot-ness of the cake is more of a metaphor, and less of a reality. There are no big shredded carrot pieces in these cakes. And, they're covered in yummy cream-cheese frosting.

Sophia tried to figure out why her cake failed to impress the mother-(pot)luckers, and came up with this interesting historical analysis. In the old days of alternative cooking, we were into purging the memory of all those Betty Crocker mixes, Minute Rice casseroles, and ground beef in gravy dinners. It was all about counteracting the culinary sins of our mothers.

The second generation of alternative cooking is about something else.  Now, it's about what the food is "free of," rather than what's in it. It has to be free of glutens, or trans fats, or dairy, or GMO's, or peanuts. It has to be untainted by Agribusiness. It has to be un-radiated, un-pesticided, unbleached. It has to leave no carbon footprint.

To use a sports metaphor:  food, these days, is all about defense. Perhaps no one asked Sophia's lovely bundt cake to dance because it looked too Traditional. It was not apparent, upon observation, what, exactly, it was free of.

Then again, maybe it was just personal.

Regardless, one thing is certain. If Sophia's good deeds fail to impress whatever divine arbiters await her after this life, she will surely be condemned to an eternity of potlucking, endlessly preparing "dishes to pass" among her fellow denizens of Hell.