How To Host (and Attend) a Successful Potluck

(The first time I hosted a party, I had two guests.  And now . . .)

This last weekend saw us hosting yet-another potluck.  And it was Awesome.  And I'm not being immodest by saying I hosted an Awesome party; after all, it's not immodest if it's a fact. 

Actually, it would now be nearly impossible for me not to host an Awesome potluck, seeing as how I've hosted quite a few over the years (due to my neurotic needs for both attention and acceptance).  Having hosted so many, I've naturally picked up a few tips on how to host an Awesome potluck.  Some of these tips I will now share with you, not only because I want to give back to the world with this selfless information-donation, but because I just like to hear myself talk.


The first step towards hosting a successful potluck is to make sure your guests feel welcome.  This is done in three ways:

#1: Create a physically-serene atmosphere in order to produce a welcoming ambiance.  To rephrase that statement in layman's terms: clear out all yo' shit.  (I love this step, because it means that -- for the three days surrounding the party -- I get to pretend like I never share my front yard with a broken-wheeled wagon, a utility trailer, a 15-foot tall ladder, or loads of black plastic buckets.)  Clearing out yo' shit is important because:

• it creates positive feng-shui
• having to pick their way around your personal shit encourages "guests" to feel more like "intruders"
• having to pick their way around your personal shit lets guests know that they weren't important-enough to clean-up for

#2: Ensure that guests are comfortable in this social situation.  Again, in layman's terms: don't just plop your lazy ass in one spot all night and neglect the majority of your guests: circulate. 

Our potlucks tend to include artsy friends from Bee's work, passionate friends from my work, conservative neighbors, and a few people we're strangely related to in some fashion (generally not even a fashion we can truly grasp). 

Now, I happen to feel that it is possible for any person to find common ground with anyone else: the trick is to figure out what that common ground is.  And that's the host's most-important function: to pop in on conversations between strangers and make certain they're finding common ground.  I don't mean that they have to be discussing something both parties have done, but it ought to be a topic that's at least interesting to both parties.  Seeing as how the host is the only person who knows both parties, the host is also the best-situated to steer guests to common-denominator topics.  Once groups of guests seem at-ease with each other, a host may leave them to their own devices for awhile.

I know how important this step is, since I am both (shockingly) extremely shy and (not-so-shockingly) socially-inept, so I have a challenging time mingling at other people's parties.  I love my own parties, though, since I know everyone there and the control freak in me gets to have dominion over the situation (again: I have a neurotic need for both attention and acceptance).

This explains why I rarely sit still for long at my parties: I flit from table to table like a maniac social-butterfly, thrusting myself in on conversations, throwing non sequiturs into the air, then distractedly hopping off to another table to force myself into their conversation. 

And, to answer your question: Yes, there is a fine line between being a gracious hostess and a demented one.

#3: Make the party self-explanatory.  In layman's terms: make obvious the location of everything so your guests don't have to wander around looking for the trashcan or asking all the other party-goers where the bathroom is.

 This is also a fantastic help for the host, as s/he is not constantly getting interrupted in the midst of maniacal table -hopping / conversation-usurping.  Also, it makes clean-up much easier if guests know how to separate their waste; we had five buckets out at this last potluck: one for trash, one for glass, one for things that were recyclable, one for things that could go in the dishwasher, and one for food scraps (for the chickens).  Having the 5 separate buckets was one of the best things we did.

Some other tips for you:

• Consider activities for the kids.  At Mr. C's suggestion, we ended up setting out his Spin Art machine, then decided to also make available bubbles and his play tee-pee.  It made for a cute kid's area that the adults actually liked, too.

 

• If you plan on hosting a lot of potlucks, it's not too hard to "go green".  Over the years, I've found a stack of cheerful, reusable plastic plates on sale, have picked up gently-used silverware at thrift stores, and got a good deal on lightweight cups.  

This was the first party at which I used non-disposable cups, and I had a little bit of a challenge coming up with a way for guests to identify their own cup.  I find that wine charms are often ignored, and they would be hard to use on stacking cups, anyway.  Instead of having guests write their name on masking tape and attaching that to their cup, I came up with a more elegant, permanent solution: I sprayed chalkboard paint in a strip on each cup and left a piece of chalk by the stack so guests could write-and-wipe:

I think Martha would be proud.  (Or she would have been, had I been more-adept with my painter's tape and stencils).

I loved the chalkboard-paint idea so much, I decided to paint a strip on each of the cute glass beverage dispensers I'd bought at thrift stores this last year; then I could forgo the awkward masking-tape-to-I.D.-the-beverage step.  Sadly, after painting them, all three of my cute beverage dispensers cracked when I filled each just a little with water and froze them to make ice.

Alas, my replacement beverage dispensers were not nearly as adorable:

And now, a few tips on food:

• Although the idea of a potluck is for everyone to bring "a dish", I find it helpful for the host to provide the main dish and to specify that guests bring "a side dish or dessert".  Otherwise you may run into the problem of having only chips (the bane of my potluck-hosting existence!) and no actual food.  For this potluck, as an example, Bee and I cooked up ham and biscuits, and everyone else brought salads and casseroles.  It's fine for a single salad or casserole to feed just a few people, as -- odds are -- there will be several to choose from.  However, there ought to be enough of the main dish to feed everyone.  Which explains why I quadrupled the amount of my usual biscuit recipe:

 

•  However, it's not a bad idea for the host to provide at least one side (hence the biscuits) and one dessert, too.  Bee and I host super-casual potlucks in that we really don't know what anyone's going to bring (except the apparently-requisite bane-of-my-potluck-hosting-existence chips).  Not knowing what will be brought means sometimes you're a little short on a food group.  Shockingly-enough, this time around it was dessert.  I was glad I'd made a few Chocolate Chunk Loafs, because otherwise we would have only had a humongous 3-tiered huckleberry cake, a delicious apple cheesecake, and a few pints of strawberries to split between approximately 30 people.
• If you are a guest and want ideas on what to bring, remember this: the popularity of a food is directly relate-able to its portability.  Hand-held brownies = very popular.  Items requiring a knife = not so popular (so I was a little nervous serving ham slices, but it turned out OK).
• On a similar note: if you want the item you brought to get eaten, remove at least a piece of it before leaving it on the communal table.  Due, I suspect, to politeness, potluck guests are uncomfortable cutting into a whole cake or a perfectly-formed asparagus aspic.  (Or maybe they just don't like asparagus aspic).
• Also, I do not recommend bringing ice cream.  Your hosts may not (gasp) have included spoons or bowls with the dishware, and the tubs of ice cream will either have to sit on the buffet table and melt, or your hosts will have to rearrange all the salmon in their freezer to store the tubs, then constantly obsess over when to bring out the ice cream and serve it and then how long it can stay out for all the guests and when it is time to put it back.  Too.  Much.  Work.

I like, however, seeing the variety of food people bring.  I think potlucks are fun for that reason.  So I'm always a little thrown when people want me to come up with a specific item for them to bring.  I suppose I'm a little offended that they aren't appreciating that this is the one area of the party where I'm not being a total bitchy control freak and I'm allowing them to express their own creativity.  Also, I'm often called just hours before the party is supposed to start with these requests for ideas.  At that point, I'm a little busy stressing over the thousands of last-minute preparations upon-which I've imposed myself, and the last thing I want to do is figure out the one frickin' thing I asked you to do.  So, from now, should you call me the day of the party and want me to tell you what to bring, I'm going to over-dramatically sigh with relief and say, "Oh, would you please bring an ice sculpture?  Thank you so much!" and then hang up.

One final note on hosting the perfect potluck: you've made your home comfortable, you've made your guests comfortable, but you also need to make sure you're comfortable.  Give yourself enough time to shower and rest before the party.  Find an outfit you feel nice in.  Do your hair.  And your other hairs.  And, when you're doing your other hairs, try not to worry too much when you have an adverse reaction to the wax:

Yes, despite the fact that you've used that same product several times a month for years, try not to focus too much on the irony that it would strip away your skin on the one day you really wanted to make an impressive impression on a huge group of people.  Don't think too much about how your concealer barely conceals it that night.  Try not to obsess over the fact that the reaction will worsen over the next few days, causing your upper lip to scab in such a way as to make makeup ineffective.  Don't cry over the fact that, for several days, it looks like you have a permanent chocolate milk mustache.  Don't worry about it so much that Bee offers to drop off Mr. C at preschool so that you won't scare all the kids with your entrance.

No, for now -- the night of the party -- just do your best to feel comfortable in your own ripped-up skin.