Potlucks are a widely polarizing topic. Some people love them, some people hate them. But almost everyone has been to one, and there's always that one person who brought something bad, weird, or didn't bring anything at all. We've collected a veritable cornucopia of ridiculous items that people brought to potlucks for your enjoyment.
Maybe Next Time We Should Prepare in Advance
“Individually it wasn’t so ridiculous, but collectively…
When I was a kid, we celebrated holidays as an extended family. Christmas was normally at our house, since we were the most centrally located. They were big relaxed gatherings with not much forethought or planning.
That year, my mother decided, that instead of her usual ham or turkey, her contribution to the potluck was to provide a clean house. But not wanting to look too stingy, she made a plate of fudge.
My grandparents were the first to arrive. Normally, they brought a potato hot dish to all our shindigs. This time, Grandma decided to do something different, so she brought fudge.
Next my aunt arrived with her family. She was known for her light, fluffy homemade rolls. But she had a new fudge recipe she wanted to try. . .
Now my uncle and his family got there. Normally, they brought a salad, but this time they brought – wait for it – a plate of fudge.
By the time all the families arrived, we represented eleven households. The potluck consisted of eleven plates of fudge. Oh, and a bunch of peanut butter sandwiches my mom and grandma threw together at the last minute.
As a ten year old kid, I thought this was the best potluck ever. The adults, on the other hand, decided a little forethought and planning might be a good idea in the future. Good memories.”
Fully Cooked Does Not Mean Fully Edible
“A couple of years ago, my then place of employment started compiling a list of what people would bring for their annual Thanksgiving potluck. Now I was fairly new to the department and was unfamiliar with their tradition. I offered to bring fried turkey chunks, because it’s a common way that turkey is cooked in the Caribbean. However, I was strongly advised against it and told that the boss always liked to bring the main dish each year. So I bought a baked macaroni and cheese casserole instead. Apparently this was a pretty well-known limitation because virtually no one else brought meat or anything that could be mistaken for the main dish. Well when the boss stated that they were going to run out and pick up the turkey from the grocery store, I wondered how I could not know that baking services were available at this particular grocery chain. Well when the boss returned I found out.
It was a ‘fully cooked’ but cold turkey. Now mind you it’s a work place so no ovens were available, only a microwave which this would not fit in. When opened, it looked slimy like it came from out of a can if that were possible, and with no way to heat it. I didn’t touch it, nor did 99% of the staff who retreated to eating a vegetarian meal that day. One brave soul did try it later in the evening. He said he grew desperately hungry in the middle of the night.”
At Least We Got Our Fiber?
“I worked in an office of about fifty workers, and we frequently had potlucks. One odd food item was brought by the director of our department. It was very dark green leaves that were slightly warm but still quite crunchy. The inner part of the leaves were packed with a mixture of unidentified assorted seeds. It was dry, nearly tasteless, and stuck in your teeth. Very chewy, and just plain icky. I had heard that because her husband had serious heart disease, she had taught herself to cook healthy meals, so maybe she wanted to treat us, too. I’m sure many of us got our fiber that day.
One lady’s idea of a salad was… odd. It was a big bowl of cut up lettuce. On top, she’d tossed one whole large tomato and one whole green onion. There was no dressing. Some of us took a bit of lettuce, but that’s all. Were we expected to each saw off a piece of the tomato and onion? I mean, it’s not like we kept paring knives in our desk drawers.
There were some people who brought some pretty good items, but too many others relied heavily on mayonnaise or Cool Whip and more than once, I suspected a dish contained both ingredients. Nothing like having to sit at a desk for the next four hours with a horribly bloated tummy.”
Talk About a Legacy
“It wasn’t ridiculous, but it was very memorable. I grew up in Northern New Jersey, and there was a very popular diner called The Claremont Diner in Verona, New Jersey. They had huge barrels of a sweet and sour cabbage salad, and they would give everyone complimentary bowls of that salad as soon as they sat down. They would continuously refill those bowls, so diners ate a lot of that salad. Everyone called it the Claremont Salad, and there were copycat recipes for Claremont Salad that people in that area liked to make.
I moved from New Jersey to Tulsa, Oklahoma, in the 1970s. I took a bowl of that salad to a potluck dinner and placed it on the table with everyone else’s food items. A little while later, someone yelled out, ‘Who brought the Claremont Salad?’ It blew my mind that someone in Tulsa, Oklahoma, identified my sweet and sour salad as the salad that was served in the Claremont Diner in Verona, New Jersey. This salad from one diner in Verona, New Jersey, had become so popular that it had been copied and spread to many distant locations before the days of the Internet. The diner has been closed for many years, but the Claremont Salad is still very much alive in restaurants, delis, and on the Internet.”
All Oil is Not Created Equal
“That would have been me.
I was invited to a party by a new friend, and it was really last minute. I flew to the cupboard to grab something for the potluck, and the quickest thing was a marbled brownie mix. I am mostly vegetarian, and it’s difficult to find pre-packaged food that is vegetarian unless it’s a single-serve item. With no time to boil grains or soak beans, I pulled the mix out and heated up the oven.
It required butter or oil. Well, I don’t have butter, and I don’t have plain vegetable oil. All I have is olive oil. Well, oil’s oil, I thought, and poured out the required amount into a measuring cup.
I brought the brownies to the party and placed them on the dessert table. Well, the table is being emptied, but despite the appealing yellow and brown marbled brownies, only one brownie is missing. No one is touching the brownies!
Well, I’m embarrassed. I feel like everyone at the party knows I brought the brownies and it looks bad that the pile is not going down. So I decided to eat one to inspire others to do the same.
I bit into it.
It was vile.
It tasted like motor oil. Well, I’ve never had motor oil, but if I had, this would have been a good approximation. I had to find a corner and spit it out.
As the party went on, I would randomly go over, pick up a brownie, and toss it in the trash.
Apparently olive oil is not a good choice for brownies.”
When a Potluck Offering is Literally a Crime
“A year ago, there was a publicized cooking competition held around my neighborhood, in which each person from a household was tasked with cooking a unique dish of their own choosing. There would be a medium-sized potluck dinner-kind-of-feast for scrutiny and tasting for the judges, with the cook of the best dish receiving a cash prize of around $200. Each participant was allotted eight days to prepare their chosen dish and present it at the dinner.
At the time, I was facing a bit of a financial crisis in that I only had a meager five cents in my piggy bank that, to say the least, was far from acceptable for someone who always has her eyes set on stuff to buy.
The competition was an opportunity for me to secure an adequate amount of cash for my needs fairly quickly and easily, so I got on with making a truly novel, never-seen-before dish that I was sure would leave the judges thunderstruck with its impeccable blend of such exotic and tasteful ingredients as to make it seem like something from heaven.
To my shock however, during the course of my preparation of the dish, I found out that a friend of mine, who had also decided to join the competition, was making the exact same dish that I was making—the only difference being her tweaking its appearance to a small extent so that it didn’t look like a direct plagiarism of my dish—but that’s exactly what it was.
So I reached out to her and implored her—not confronted her or fought her over it or anything like that—but politely implored her that she please make another dish. Sadly, she didn’t take too kindly to my request. In fact she cursed me out.
But I pressed on. After hours and hours of persistent pleadings, she accepted to stop copying my dish and to work on an original one. But oh Lord, if I knew what her new ‘dish’ was going to be, I would’ve let her copy my dish without saying a word.
The eighth day passed, and with it the time of preparation. And my dish was more than ready. I brought it to the potluck dinner to see a crowd of people already there with rows of sizzling dishes placed on the tables. I stepped forward and put mine there.
And then came my friend a while later, carrying a ponderous bag and eyeing me with a mischievous smile. I thought nothing of it but then she opened the bag and what was inside caused a deafening commotion—and that isn’t an understatement.
She reached into the bag and took out pieces of what looked to be a dog, and sure enough it was—little chops of what was once perhaps a puppy she placed on the table, as if they were meant to be eaten. Its roasted head, legs, tail, body, brain; all there, in front of dozens of appalled eyes.
And upon closer inspection, I saw it wasn’t just some dog—it was actually my pet. Of sorts. It used to come to my house occasionally for small pieces of meat that I had a penchant for giving it. What she did was murder!
The dinner had to be shut down that night and postponed because everyone present lost their minds over what she brought. Needless to say, she was permanently banned from attending future potluck dinners around the neighborhood, and I cut all ties with that monster.
The dog’s remains, because I knew it more than anyone, were entrusted to me and I later buried them in a secluded place.”
Are You Sure We Can Eat These?
“I’m not sure the item was ridiculous but the reception of it was funny. Now, I was the one to bring this dish so I do realize others might think the dish itself was ridiculous. Every Christmas Eve, my family would gather at one of our houses. It was always pot-luck and I liked to bring a savory dish and a sweet dish. I also like to have fun with it.
That particular year I found a recipe online that I thought would taste good for a savory appetizer. The recipe called for olives to be split open and filled with a soft, flavored cheese. The thing was, they were made to look like penguins. So how could I not make a snow scene for them?
I used white chocolate for the snow and igloo and blue sugar water for the water. I made enough penguins to put in another dish nearby in case people wanted to eat them but didn’t want to disturb the display. People still didn’t want to eat them because they were cute!
All was saved when the kids started breaking up the white chocolate to eat. That somehow made it okay to eat the penguins. They were tasty too, and I’m not even a huge olive fan.”
Oh Cheryl
“I don’t know if it’s the most ridiculous, but …
One of our company salespeople had a drinking problem and she was unrepentant and unapologetic about it. Cheryl earned a good salary and could afford her adult beverages and her bar tabs.
She did not cook. At all. I opened her refrigerator once and she had ice, adult beverages and ketchup. Not exaggerating. Sometimes she tossed glassware rather than wash it.
At work, lunch was the same fast food and fast casual restaurants that we all frequented during the work week. Sometimes her lunch was a five-scoop ice cream sundae instead of a burger, then she’d spend the afternoon bouncing all over the office on her sugar high.
Often that was her only food. If she went straight home, dinner was you know what, and if she was still sober enough to realize she was hungry after that was gone, maybe a Chinese or pizza delivery. But many times she had nothing but her drinking. If her evening drinking started at a happy hour somewhere, she’d scarf down whatever tidbits the bar was offering, whether it was peanuts or chilled shrimp. The happy hour offerings sometimes determined which bar she patronized that evening. Sometimes she’d end the evening with a plate from the bar menu, but again, not always.
We office employees were planning a potluck; I’ve forgotten the occasion. Cheryl insisted that she wanted to come and that she wanted to contribute. We told her she was welcome but that she didn’t need to bring anything. We expected that if she brought anything at all, it would be a purchased supermarket deli salad or maybe a pizza.
So while the rest of us brought fried chicken and macaroni and cheese and cold cuts and cupcakes, Cheryl showed up with a single bag of plain potato chips.
We all chuckled, thanked her, opened the bag, and put it on the buffet table next to the wings and potato salad. She ate a plate, then went home to her drinking.
Yeah, Cheryl was a mess.”
A Memorable First Christmas Eve
“My family is Jewish, so when a neighbor invited us to celebrate Christmas Eve with them, along with some other families we knew, we were very excited to go.
The problem was, we were returning from a cruise that morning. Our ship docked in NYC, and we hightailed it back to Philadelphia. Time was short, so I just whipped up a huge Caesar Salad, and brought a few bottles of adult beverage.
When we arrived there were several people already there. It was a potluck event. The kids went off to play with the others, and we were ushered over to the bar to get some drinks. Someone had made mini-dogs and there was some cheese and crackers, and veggies and dip. A huge table was set beautifully with a landscape of twigs, bird nests, pine cones, and lots of tea candles.
The host pulled out some pizza and chicken fingers for the kids. My salad was ceremoniously placed in the center of the table, along with some other sides like green beans and potatoes. The host served us some soup… and that was it. There was nothing else. No ham or turkey or roast beef. Nada.
I leaned over to my husband and asked… where the heck was dinner. Apparently, no one had brought a main course. We were starving! There were about 12 adults all looking at each other, when the twigs on the table caught on fire.
We all scrambled to put out the fire. Then, after finally settling down again, the guy siting next to me decided to steal some of the chicken fingers from the kids. ‘You want one?’ he said pointing to his plate. ‘No thanks,’ I said. Things were getting very desperate and very awkward.
As we are not big drinkers, and exhausted to boot, we were the first to say our goodbyes and go home.
After we got into the car, I turned to my husband and said, ‘Is that what most people do on Christmas Eve? Why didn’t they have food for us?’ He said, ‘Honey, we’re Jewish… That’s all we do, shove food into people’s faces. It looks like they were more interested in the eggnog and extended drink selection. Maybe there was a miscommunication or something?’
I shrugged. ‘That was some fire, huh? I told you those tea candles were going to go up in flames sitting in kindling like that, right on the table!’ I said.
‘I’m tipsy, and starving,’ he replied. The kids started to complain too. ‘Mom! Please, can we get something to eat! We’re hungry!’
So we ended up doing what we usually do on Christmas Eve… We went out for some Chinese food!”
A Private Party in the Midst of a Public Party
“The professors were all already there, perched around the living room as we, their master’s and doctoral students, arrived for what would be the program area’s last holiday party.
In past years, the food (provided by program funds and supplemented by faculty potluck) and drinks (provided by the faculty) flowed and the party went on for six or seven hours. We students and our partners came and enjoyed the warm companionship on a cold winter’s evening. We’d always looked forward to it and were the envy of students in other programs.
Those were prior years when my advisor and another professor planned and organized the party. That year, as part of larger shifts and machinations, the other professors voted them off the social committee and took over. That year, the invitation said ‘no guests’ and ‘please bring drinks to share.’
The food table was sparse, its meager catered offerings lukewarm and put out without care, as if aluminum trays and plastic wrap were a holiday theme. The drinks table was, except for disposable cups, bare. I must have looked aghast. My advisor caught my eye and shrugged, eloquently and enigmatically.
We students set down our offerings of the usual adult beverages, and the professors sprang to life, gathering around the drinks table to pick the best of what we brought before we had even doffed our coats.
The first ridiculous thing: We students, the poorest of us scraping by at maybe $20,000 a year, brought the drinks.
The second ridiculous thing: Professors, the lowest-paid earning $90,000, brought their meanness and thirst and nothing else.
My advisor handed me an empty cup and led me away from the drinks table, suggesting I get some food. Weird. A minute later, her husband appeared at my elbow. He was a short, rotund man, grinning foolishly, negligently holding a bottle by its neck. He poured the inviting red beverage in my cup, winked at me, and moved on.
It was the best I’d ever tasted, a heady pinot noir, fruity but balanced, with a long, complex finish. I stood there with my nose in my red Solo cup just enjoying the smells. People speak of terroir, thespirit of the land. I could smell the rich truffled earth beneath my feet, feel the sun-warmed afternoon about to turn to cool ocean breeze evening. I knew if I moved just so, a hawk would launch off my outstretched limbs and climb into the blue Willamette sky.
I watched my advisor’s husband flit around the room. My advisor was directing him to particular students with glances and nods. Too soon, his bottle was empty.
Two times, he vanished into the coat closet, performed his vinous miracle, and emerged with a full bottle. But the real miracle was his dance among talkers, slipping between bodies and appearing at the right place at the right moment while avoiding the professors who were gulping down our cheap party beverages.
I thought, for just a moment, I’d sleep with that man, then shook off the idea. The power of that drink!
The third ridiculous thing: My advisor brought a ludicrous Dionysus bearing shards of beauty and grace in the midst of her dark dour enemies.
About a half hour into the party, word was out. We students would leave the party in a half hour and reconvene at a nearby bar.
My advisor and her husband left with us, and we invited them to join us, but they turned us down. They knew we were gathering to chew on the corpse of the party.
Within a year, she left for a better job at a University halfway around the world, but to my eternal gratitude remained my advisor from a distance.
And the holiday party became a platter of sandwiches in one of the meeting rooms.”
My Kingdom for Some Variety
“I live in a community that has a significant number of elderly residents. There are regular community social events including a weekly dinner, cooked by rotating volunteers and offered at a nominal price. For the elderly neighbors, it’s a weekly highlight, getting them out of their houses and seeing friends without the trouble of driving or the expense of a real restaurant.
When I had first moved in, I decided to attend the Friday Nite Dinner for the day after Thanksgiving, which was (unusual) a potluck. Because of the date, I expected there would be various dressed-up leftovers (turkey, cranberry, yams, stuffing) so I brought a fresh tomato salad to provide a contrast.
The only other attendees at this potluck were the various elderly neighbors – probably 12 or 16 of them – and every single one had brought some variation of boxed scalloped potatoes. So there we were, with one tomato salad and a dozen dishes of dehydrated, reconstituted scalloped potatoes!
And nobody said a word. Honestly, I felt like my tomato salad was the oddball – so embarrassed to have made such an odd salad! In retrospect, though, seriously, twelve or more dishes of the same bland instant potato mix?”
My Way or the Highway
“As usual, with these stories, the really ridiculous thing is the people who brought it. We were on an RV caravan with 5 other RV’rs. We usually went to a restaurant for supper together after a day of traveling, but when we were stopped for more than one night, we would either have a pot luck happy hour or dinner.
One of the couples were a couple who had dated during high school and then each married someone else. Twenty-five years later, they met again (both now single again) and fell in love and got married. The lady apparently told the guy that she didn’t want to get married again because she was tired of cooking and never wanted to prepare a meal again in her life. In order to ‘seal the deal’, he told her that it was not a problem. They could eat out every meal if she wanted or he would get his own meals. I’m pretty sure he didn’t think she would stick to it—but she meant it!
So, every happy hour and every potluck, her contribution to the event was two containers of hummus. Nothing to dip into it. Just the hummus. Of course, nobody ate it so at the end, she would pop the lids back in and bring them out at the next event. Her husband, however, was first at every dish and really plowed into the food. I think he was starving!
BTW, we travelled together for over 6 weeks!”