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 |    Not for the faint of art. |
What is your go-to dish to bring to a potluck? Does your family have any traditional recipes? (In Hawaii, these appetizers are called “pupus”  )The predominant religious denomination around here is Southern Baptist. I think most people, when they think "Southern Baptist," they think, like, Jerry Falwell - intolerant, closed-minded, racist, sexist, homophobic, etc. While I think all these things, I also think "casserole." Intolerance aside, until they find out I'm not Christian, they're quite welcoming - I present as a straight white guy. Well, to be fair, I am straight, though not narrow. And to be even more fair, not everyone embodies all of the negative traits of the Southern Baptists as a whole. Many of them are, I presume, good people. Anyway, point is, from this outsider's perspective, the Southern Baptists are obsessed with casserole. One thing that SBs do very well, apart from attempting to inject their religion into our government, is potlucks. And since, as I said, they're the predominant religious denomination around here, I've been to what passes for parties among them. They'll call a potluck at the drop of a hat: weddings, funerals, random church functions, some Puritanical law gets passed in the state, whatever. At these parties, you can be sure of exactly two things: 1) Myriad varieties of deviled eggs; 2) Myriad varieties of casserole. Personally, I think the "deviled eggs" thing is psychologically interesting for a bunch of religious folks, but there's really no mystery about the dish itself: take hard-boiled eggs, remove the yolks, combine the yolks with various other ingredients, cram the resulting mixture back into the hollowed-out hard-boiled egg whites, and top with what passes for fiery spice around here (usually paprika). Casseroles, however, mystify me. I'm not sure why. They can't be that hard to do, or millions of Southern Baptists wouldn't do them, in all their various incarnations. You'd think that would teach them something about variety and the wonders of diversity, but... no. They just plop down their armies of Corningware, oblivious to the obvious metaphor. It's not like I've never made a casserole - I've followed several recipes. But what stumps me is that I don't know what the essential thing is that makes a casserole a casserole and not something else. Baking? You also bake lasagna; is that a casserole? Meat? Nonsense; there are plenty of vegetarian casseroles. My parents were, obviously, not Southern Baptists. I don't think the Jewish congregations around here have a tradition of potlucks; we're more the "caterers" type. I wouldn't know, though, because I quit being religious before I bothered to care about such things. And my parents were from diametrically opposite cultures in the US, so they didn't even have food in common. Add to that the simple fact that my mother couldn't cook worth a damn, and my dad didn't (product of his time, you know), and pretty much everything I know about food I taught myself in self-defense. There is one thing that my mom could cook, and that's chicken soup. But I'm pretty sure that's a genetic thing, passed down from Ashkenazi to Ashkenazi in a line of matrilineal descent. Soup, however, doesn't usually feature at potlucks. Too messy. And I never quite got the hang of it, myself. So, yeah, no traditional family recipes here. Just stuff I've picked up along the road. So, when it comes to the ultra-rare potluck that I end up crashing, I go with the easy out: chips and dip. One time I forgot the dip, and apparently that's a massive social faux pas, because I never got invited back. Suits me. It's not like they agree with my alcohol-positive lifestyle. |
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