The luck of the potluck.

Of course, if you invited me to join your potluck, you may not be so lucky.

In the military, almost every event is an occasion for a potluck. After a while, it really sort of gets on my nerves. I'm the kind of person who realizes around 4:15pm each day that, oh yeah, I have to actually cook something for dinner. People are depending on me -- me, of all people! -- to eat. And sad to say, I usually realize this only after my son starts to get cranky and starts rummaging through the pantry. As he starts upending random boxes in his foraging attempts, I rush to figure out what kind of meal one can exactly make from the groceries that are in my house. The other night, I had to make magic with some farfalle, a package of frozen peas, sour cream and a lime. The meal wasn't horrible but it's hard to think ill of any food that is immediately followed by vanilla wafers for dessert.

So if I get this discombobulated about just making dinner for my family just imagine how I get when I have to make a dish for 50+ people. One, since I didn't register for my wedding, I don't have any actual dishes that are (a) pretty or (b) big enough to serve in public. And two, I usually don't remember that I have to bring something to the potluck until, oh, about an hour before I actually have to be there, which sort of limits my options.

Last night, I somehow managed to make some macaroni and cheese to take with me to a farewell potluck. The sauce was homemade, following the recipe as much as I could with what I had (numerous substitutions were made), but the noodles, well, let's just say they were not the real deal. With no type of *real* pasta in the house, I just opened up 4 boxes of Kraft's The Cheesiest and stole the noodles for my own ends. I can't quite figure out if this constitutes cheating or sheer brilliance. When I finished the mac and cheese, I searched high and low for an appropriately sized container to place it in. The only thing that jumped out at me was my son's sand bucket. It's got side handles and a lovely raised shell pattern on the sides. And I figured if I was stooping that low, I might as well just use the matching shovel as a serving spoon.

So, yes, I'm not proud but I took my ghetto mac and cheese to this dinner in a sand bucket and served it with a kiddie shovel. Hey, at least I cleaned it thoroughly first.

And you know what? People loved it. They thought it was so cute. And I don't think they were lying either. My desperation somehow resulted in my looking crafty, as if I had put a lot of forethought into my dish and its presentation. I was floored.

Now I just have to figure out how many times I can repeat this performance before I'm found out.