Church potluck-yummy!

Church potluck is this Wednesday and I'm actually getting excited. I'm bringing Stuffed Burger Bundles, Orange Fluff Salad, Potato Salad, and a dump cake.

Anyone have any favorite potluck items?

Peel and cut in thin diagonal slices, 1 five-pound bag of carrots

Boil carrot slices in a big pot of water, along with a crushed clove of garlic, until just tender.

Drain carrots.

Mix in olive oil and red wine vinegar and fresh lemon juice to taste.

Add salt, black pepper, cumin seeds and lots of chopped fresh parsley.

Optional: raisins

I always add raisins to mine. I like Moroccan carrot salad! Good dish to bring!

I usually just bring one thing - depends on the crowd - beans if the crowd isn't a normal eat-beans-all the-time bunch, some kind of beef if I am feeling "promotional" (and not a big crowd! ha), Mexican corn bread is my usual for easy recipe multiplying and portability.

Sometimes cobbler if I have the fruit.

OK I'm getting hungry now.

I always bring two dishes, though most don't. (I figure one dish for me and one for my child should be more than fair. Besides, not everyone can afford to bring something, since we have an open dinner to the public for anyone who needs a free meal.)

Since I am bringing a friend and her two children I've decided to bring two more dishes. A coworker has been attending the normal Wednesday meals recently and I know she cannot afford a dish so I told her not to worry about it.

I just want to bring plenty.

sounds like a good community service to have it open - I rag on religion a LOT, but there are the occasional positives;)

We always have freewill donations available if someone wants to donate but it's not expected or even encouraged. We have staff that cook every Wednesday, except for a few times a year when we have a potluck (and the holiday meals). The Wednesday meals are home-cooked style and cost less than a burger combo at a fast food joint. If a person cannot afford it then it's free, no questions asked and no attention drawn to the person. The holiday meal is huge and it's also free for those who need it.

I think that the smaller churches in small towns, though often more conservative, tend to be more willing to offer these things to the community. I've noticed that the local megachurch offers nothing yet all the smaller churches offer free meals every night of the week (they have a schedule worked out with each other), offer free labor for the elderly (yard work, minor repairs, etc), and they even have older women who offer to assist new moms with the care of their newborns while they take a nap or a shower. Our church offers free meals for new moms for the first month, if they sign up.

It's the loud, obnoxious ones who make the rest of us look bad.

:loveya:

but I can share food. I can always find something to fix.

Was their motto. They grew up skinny and without and wanted to spread their wealth from their union jobs with others. Their satisfaction was helping others survive. Some of the GOP types were unwilling to share their food, their time, or anything else, really. Sad, because we all here for such a short time.

to others. Honestly, I wish we'd see more of them in the future.

I guess not too many people on DU attend pot lucks. Are they becoming a thing of the past?

That was a long time ago. People don't favor these like they did at one time. Most places are worried about food allergies and hygiene. Not that commercial places don't have their share of that.

I know the stories about church picnics and spoiled mayonnaise in the potato salad. I never got sick, though. When my dad died and people brought us boatloads of homemade fried chicken, potato salad, baked beans and coleslaw, etc. Luckily a family member brought pig's feet spaghetti and that was a welcome break.

While in college I used to cook a huge southern style Thanksgiving feast for all the college students we knew who couldn't get home for Christmas, etc. It was a lot of fun feeding all those guys.

A few residential care places have workers that cook for the clients, but they monitor every single thing carefully.

Some locales have outlawed feeding the homeless and giving out home cooked food for fear of illness, which I think is wrong on a person-to-person basis.

Glad you're getting to break bread with friends. It's a good thing.

Can you describe that? Thanks!

But it tasted just great. It was from some Italian inlaws and they'd make sphagetti sauce out of anything. I didn't notice it tasting any different and a sausage based or beef based sauce, myself. It was a great break from chicken.

I've also heard of braising fresh pig's feet with a marinara sauce and baking it in the oven. Supposedly it's very good.

In this day and time I'd think we'd have more pot lucks than ever before. It's cheap entertainment, if nothing else. Everyone gets to enjoy something different, relax,and connect for a few hours.

We're planning a potluck with the coworkers at the end of the month and a cookout each month throughout the summer. If everyone brings something it's cheap and it's a great time for everyone, including their families and children. Find a park, cook out some hot dogs, bring the salads and chips and maybe a dessert. Someone brings a ball and a bat and we have a softball game after.

Sometimes I think we've lost something by not connecting in such a simple way.

(i'm now retired) but when i found out some "things" about my co-workers' hygiene, it fell out of favor ;-)

but then again, so can some restaurants. I've worked in the food industry for far too long not to question quite a bit coming out of a kitchen.

I just bring a salad since it is easy to prepare ahead of time and doesn't have to be kept hot or cold.

If I am in a really good mood, I bring spicy corn:
One can of corn
One can of Rotel tomatoes (I use generics)
One 8 oz pkg of cream cheese
Heat until the cream cheese melts. Too easy. Really yummy.

I'm keeping your spicy corn recipe for future reference! Thanks!

(Do Rotel tomatoes have spices in them? I never used them.)

I get the generic at Aldi's here and that is all they are called. Rotel are so expensive, but they are great to use.

I liked it!

Most of the pot lucks I've been to tend to be short on the veggies. I'll often cook up some green beans, and toss them with a little bit of chicken bullion and toasted almonds and or some sliced mushrooms. Or, maybe I'll bring a tossed salad.

especially as we head into the summer. We're still a small enough sort of town that many, especially the older congregation members, have veggie gardens. Whenever they bring in fresh veggies I go overboard!

mmm....willing to share the recipes? :)

I have lots of the jello/cool whip style recipes. They're always a hit at potlucks.

Burger Bundles are the go-to for potlucks for me.

Stuffed Burger Bundles

Preheat oven to 350F. Cook one box of Stove Top Stuffing according to package. While cooking take one-two pounds of ground beef (or turkey or combo) and flatten into burger patties. (The size is up to you. For home we make them bigger but for potlucks we make them smaller.) Once stuffing has cooked take off of stove and place a spoonful in the middle of each patty. Wrap patty around stuffing, leaving top open. In separate bowl add one-two cans of cream of mushroom soup (depends on how much meat you use), between 1/4 to 1/2 cup of ketsup, 1-2 TBSP Worchester sauce, and pepper to taste. Mix well. Place each burger bundle in a baking dish and pour mixture over top. Bake until cooked through, between 25-30 minutes.

Orange Fluff Salad
1 small package mini marshmallows
1 can crushed pineapple in juice, drained and juice reserved
1 can mandarin oranges in juice, drained and juice reserved
1 container cottage cheese, drained (do not reserve)
one box orange jello
1 container of Cool Whip

In bowl mix reserved juices with the jello powder until blended. Add fruits and cottage cheese, mixing with spoon. Fold in Cool Whip and marshmallows and chill.

Jello salads are old-timey recipes, which do well at potlucks. And the burger bundles are gone as fast as I put them out. Everyone loves them and they all want the recipe.

Maybe not the healthiest but it is pretty damn good and I never know what to bring either.

Not when old farm wives get involved in cooking, it isn't!

home extension cookbooks. All the farmer's wives contribute their best recipes to those cookbooks. Not the healthiest, but delicious and filling! Yum!

but still healthier than fast food. Fast food has no real taste and is absolutely horrible.

If it were my choice I'd rather eat some pickled watermelon rinds, anything made with a pound of butter and some salad with homemade mayo then anything off of a fast food menu.

My children are 27, 29 and 31. I seldom took them to fast food places. We had pop about once a month. They always acted like they were deprived.

When I was younger, it was almost a once in a lifetime event if we went out for hamburgers. And I am pretty sure the hamburgers we ate in restaurants, even the drive-in types, were homemade. I don't remember very many overweight children when I was growing up, either. It seems like every class had "the fat kid," but that was all. (I am not trying to be cruel, just factual). I am saddened by the obese children I see now. Life has to be miserable for them, even without the health concerns.

My son put on a lot of weight when he first left home. He ate fast food all the time. The girls seemed to know better. He had to learn the hard way. Now he eats better, and he has lost the weight.

We come from a rural background. We do love the old-fashioned farmer-type food. I make some of those recipes on special occasions, and during the holidays. I think we can't eat that way any more because we are not doing the manual labor.

Originally, the sameness of the fast food restaurants was on of their selling points. It was supposed to be a good thing that every McDonald's, from coast to coast, served the same menu. One could count on the food, the quality of the ingredients, the cleanliness, the service, etc., etc., to be the same, from coast to coast.

and my child also thinks she's deprived, compared to her classmates. If we eat out I prefer to take her somewhere where we can sit and be served, usually something local.

raw broccoli florets, rough chopped
diced red onion
sunflower seeds
lots of bacon bits (home-cooked and drained is best, but jarred is okay)
raisins
dressing made with mayo, a bit of sugar, and vinegar

but they call it tree-top salad around here. It's pretty good!

I used to agonize over what to bring. I finally settled on either a vinaigrette based pasta salad or baked ziti.

There are a couple of church spaghetti dinners coming up :9 .

I make meat sauce, mix it with ziti, cake on the mozzarella, then bake it 'til the cheese is bubbly.

We also do a pasta with sausage and peppers in a crockpot for potlucks.

I brought cucumber sandwiches but some of the other yummy things there were Snicker Salad, Ramen Noddle Salad, homemade eggrolls and pickle roll-ups. I absolutely love Snicker Salad!

if I were to venture a guess I'd think the pickle roll-ups are similar to what we call frog eyes: a thin slice of ham with whipped cream cheese spread around it then rolled up over a pickle and thinly sliced to look like a frog's eye.

The question is: what's snicker salad?

SNICKERS® SALAD

1 container Cool Whip
6 SNICKERS® bars, cut into bite-size pieces
3 or 4 c. chopped apples

Mix all these ingredients together and chill. This doesn't sound like it would be a very good salad, but it is really good! (I like to chill the SNICKERS® bars before cutting them. They cut much easier this way).

* * *

My other question: Is this eaten as a dessert?

I wish you still had the recipe.

We had the potluck tonight. Instead of the burger bundles I made an enchilada casserole. The pan was empty within five minutes and the bowl of fluff emptied ten minutes later.

my fondest memories were the potluck dinners in the church basement. We had like 2 dozen blue-haired matrons who got everyone stuffed silly. My favorites: homemade mac-n-cheese, green bean casserole, and turkey tetrazini.

The church I go to now has dinners every week. I make green bean casserole, beef stew, sweet potato pie, whatever I feel like eating basically! Its a lot of fun and there is a ton of good food. We have a lot of good cooks :)