Potluck

Sunday. November 11. 2018. 4:06 p.m. Provo. Utah.

I hereby make a record of a Potluck held in the Community Room of the Valley Villas Senior Housing Building at 650 West 100 North.

For the past several months I have been bringing soups, salads, hotdishes, and curries to the kitchen adjacent to the Lobby and serving them out to one and all an hour before Sacrament Meeting in the Community Room at 1 p.m.

But two weeks ago I decided to delay serving until after the Relief Society meeting , which ends at 2 p.m. Suddenly the crowd of hungry sisters grew unmanageable, so I told them I quit -- I couldn’t feed twenty at a time. But those Relief Society ladies are tenacious as well as starving. They proposed that we start doing a Potluck each Sunday after Relief Society (and, by implication, I could bring the main course.) Since Sunday afternoons are rather boring for me, I grudgingly acquiesced.

I told the ladies we would have a blessing on the food first, and that in honor of Veteran’s Day we would let all the veterans go first. This didn’t sit well with several hoggish types, who had already filled their paper plates up with all the best goodies. I told them, as politely as possible, that they would have to wait for the blessing and that they would have to let our brave veterans go first. This caused several of them to throw their plates in the trash in a fit of pique. I muttered a Scotch blessing over them as they marched back to their own apartments, where I hope they choked on a stale Ritz cracker.

This Sunday I made a spicy Thai chicken curry -- the coconut sauce was thick with red pepper flakes. I figured the ladies who like to shove their way in line first and take the biggest portions of everything would get an unpleasant surprise when they dug into my fiery stew. But the joke was on me; they gobbled it up with unalloyed relish and didn’t even break a sweat. Doubtful as to its potency, I took a tablespoon of the curry myself and had to rush down the hall to the drinking fountain before I could get the steam to stop issuing from my ears. So I guess those nanny goats will eat just about anything on God’s green earth, as long as it’s free.

I’m happy to say that several of the ladies brought some very nice vittles -- including scalloped potatoes, a succulent coleslaw with sunflower seeds and apple slices in it, and a homemade chocolate cake. The rest of the gang just went over to Fresh Market across the street and bought stale cookies, apples that were about to be thrown out, and cheap boxes of Brand X ice cream bars. One old couple, who don’t choose to wear dentures, gave me a jar of expired mustard and a jar of expired sweet pickle relish in return for letting them into the feast. But then, my Potluck philosophy is that no one gets turned away as long as there’s any food left. Karen Allen, who you kids know from North Dakota, insisted on quizzing each person at the Potluck to find out what they brought, and if they didn’t bring anything she told me she would ask them to leave. Summoning every ounce of patience I possess (which is never very much, and was rapidly diminishing at that moment) I gently suggested that we just let well enough alone this time, as it was a sort of shakedown cruise, and worry about deadheads next Sunday. She agreed to that.

Old people, and especially those here in Provo, do not seem to have much of a sense of taste. They like to graze indiscriminately on fresh and stale alike -- so the mushy apples and stale cookies and gluey ice cream bars all disappeared in due course, right along with the really good food.

So I guess I could make a lasagne from used cardboard next Sunday and it would still get eaten up to the last staple. But I choose the high way -- I am making baked hamburger goulash, with a fresh garden salad on the side. Enough for twenty. Everyone else can bring pork rinds, for all I care.