Sewanee Potluck

My nine hour drive to Sewanee from Scottsville moved along at a decent pace. I stopped for gas, coffee, and a Taco Bell Doritos taco and then found myself heading up the mountain and rolling on into our driveway. Very soon thereafter Dad and I drove over to MP's for a potluck affair.

All the usual suspects were in attendance, but many had nice little twists to keep things  interesting.

Dad made a fresh corn salad with his favorite new corn: ambrosia.

I heaped my plate with couscous, bean salad, potato salad, cherries and a few other things hiding around in there.

Sewanee hadn't seen any rain in three weeks, but within two hours of my arrival, we had a nice bit of a shower.

After we left I asked Dad to drive to the Cross so I could get a look of the valley before the night took away all light in the sky. Pretty pretty.

It was lovely to see a lot of familiar faces at MP's and to enjoy good company and great food!

Pot Luck

Over the weekend my parents' friends had a pot luck. We attended. I was, as I often am, the only person under thirty. Good crowd though. Margaritas were served and food was plentiful. This grapefruit and avocado dish was refreshing.
This potato casserole type thing was very nice and creamy.
There was an inordinate number of rice dishes. I didn't try all of them but they all looked very nice and, I'm sure, tasted great.




My mother made quite a nice potato salad. The secret is not overwhelming the whole thing with mayonnaise, a little red wine vinegar and onions. I liked it very much and was glad that we got to take home a little of it for a later lunch snack.

There was also spaghetti and sauce. It was the kind of spaghetti I prefer: thick. Angel hair and thin spaghetti, well, they're not exactly as satisfying to me.
Then there was lady. Lady can perk her ears up in just such a way as to resemble, strongly, a worried ewok.

Themed Potluck

Yesterday I made a pumpkin soup to write up for Chicagoist. I will not show you the soup because I have yet to write up the post and I usually like them to be simultaneous (what?). It was actually quite kismetic that I planned on making pumpkin soup because the boyfriend and I were invited to a pumpkin/gourd/apple themed, Vassarite sponsored, pot luck on Saturday. So I was able to make the soup and then foist it off on other people...I didn't actually like the soup, though all those at the potluck who spoke to me said they did.
Others brought: salads with apples, chicken, butternut squash soup, pumpkin seed brittle, sweet potato pie, apple pie and pumpkin pie.
The boyfriend and I weren't sure about attending this event since we're not, actually, very familiar with the host who threw it. And, well, new people scare us. But I thought that it would be good to meet some new people and have more conversations with these Vassar types. I was right, it was a nice evening complete with a strange run-in.

The boyfriend and I got to the potluck on time and were one of a just a few people there (we didn't know anybody but the host). A little later on a girl and a guy came in and I had a very strong feeling that I had, if not actually met him before, seen and heard this guy talk. But since he didn't seem to give me a doubletake I assumed it was in my head. But when, ten minutes later, the boyfriend also commented on his familiarity, I decided that there was a mystery and it needed to be solved. I asked the dude if he went to Vassar, he hadn't. I asked him what he was doing in Chicago, I forget if he answered the question. I was going to ask something else when it all suddenly made sense....A few weeks back player with words had a birthday party. It was a well attended party, most of the wine night crowd showed up as did a number of first year MFAWers. One of the first years brought a friend who had recently moved from Oxford to Chicago. And this friend was the dude at the potluck. This is strange and interesting to me because of the bare thread that connected me to this most recent party and the bare thread that connected the dude to the other one. I guess it's rare (for me) to see random people twice.