Our office is having one of our periodic potluck lunches today. Inspired by Lee’s thread, I’m wondering if other offices do this, and if so, what you brought.
I brought pasta salad:
3/4 box three-color pasta wheels, cooked
3 or 4 smallish tomatos, cut up
3/4 can pitted black olives, halved
1 12-oz. jar marinated artichoke hearts
couple of pinches of basil (dried, because that’s what I had)
Mix everything up and let it sit for a few hours (or up to a day) to let the flavors come together. The measures are approximate because I no longer look at the original recipe when I make this – I just kind of keep throwing stuff in till the color combo is pleasing. (A few more olives? Okey doke.)
You’re also supposed to put in some quartered mushrooms – about four or six – which I didn’t because they didn’t have loose 'shrooms at the supermarket last night.
I usually bring cookies. Homemade Chocolate Chip cookies. Or Double Chocolate (evil) cookies. Actually, I like the office pot lucks, as the provide a good excuse to make cookies.
I like cookies.
Maybe that’s why I view Cookie Monster as a theat.
I brought my standard fall potluck contribution, Pumpkin Dip & Gingersnaps:
Pumpkin Dip
1 15oz can solid pack pumpkin
1 8oz package cream cheese (reduced fat OK, non-fat horrible)
2 cups 10x sugar
2 tsp pumpkin pie spice
Nutmeg to taste
Soften cream cheese, mix with pumpkin. Add sugar and spices. Refrigerate. Serve with ginger snaps (if you’re ambitious, you can make your own…I use store-bought).
While I don’t have an office to potluck with, I’ve had bad luck in the past year.
The church potluck to which I took lasagna, had too many pasta dishes to count.
The picnic I took cookies to, so did six others.
But the most recent (August) potluck choice was a success. Fruit Pizza. As about the only fruit-like or dessert-like offering, it was gone in a flash.
Simplified version of recipe
sugar cookie crust
cream cheese with a little sugar
Fresh fruit (I used strawberries, kiwifruit, blueberries and red grapes)
Orange juice glaze
Note: One can theoretically make a fruit pizza with any fruit you have available. I think I would fail to recognize it as being from my Mom’s recipe if it didn’t contain at least strawberries and kiwifruit.
I like chocolate lasagna. Use any lasagna recipes, but make the following chagnes:
Boiled lasagna noodles (if you really want to do it right, make the noodles and add about 1/4 cup of cocoa to the dry ingrediants), ricotta cheese with spices and sugar added (dried fruit optional), and chocolate sauce instead of tomato sauce.
I brought this once and then forever had to bring it again. It trumped the cheesecake that I’d always brought before for requests.
Antipasto Pasta Salad
Preparation Time: 30 min.
Serves: 10 as a side dish
Ingredients:
1 box Campagnelle pasta (or other medium-sized shaped pasta such as orichette)
6 oz. Hot Italian salami
2 bell peppers; one yellow and one red
1 can large black olives
8 oz. Marinated artichoke hearts
4 oz. Pickled asparagus
6 oz. fresh Mozzarella cheese
Dressing:
½ C. Extra virgin olive oil
¼ C. Red wine vinegar
Fresh ground pepper, to taste
Dried basil, to taste
½ tsp. Coarse salt
Directions:
Combine last five ingredients in serving bowl to make dressing, and whisk together.
Cook pasta according to package directions for al dente. When pasta is done, remove from heat, and rinse in cold water until cool. Add pasta to serving bowl. Dice bell peppers, cheese, and salami. Roughly slice olives into large pieces. Slice asparagus in 1-inch long sections. Slice any over-large artichoke hearts.
Toss all ingredients with dressing, and chill.
Salad is best the second day. Of course, throw in whatever you like in an antipasto theme. Pickled cauliflower would be especially good, but I can never get it together to pickle it ahead of time.
Spinach rolls- Mix together some miracle whip, finely chopped spinach, and finely chopped chicken breast chunks. Spread onto some flour tortillas. Roll em up, slice em up, and stick em with a toothpick.
Super easy when you forgot it was potluck day until that morning- Grap your crockpot, stop at the grocery store and pick up a jar of your favorite BBQ sauce and a pack of cocktail weenies. Plug it in when you get to work and it’s ready by lunchtime.
I don’t have my recipe with me, so I’m guesstimating amounts, but this is what I always bring and folks go wild for it:
Chinese cabbage salad
1 small head of white cabbage, shredded
1 carrot, shredded
3 green onions, chopped fine
2 stalks bok choy, shredded
1 package of chicken Top Ramen, crumbled by smacking the package with a rolling pin
3/4 cup slivered almonds, toasted
2 TB sesame seeds, toasted
Dressing
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/4 cup rice vinegar
1/8 cup sugar
1 seasoning package from chicken Top Ramen
1 TB soy sauce
big pinch chili flakes
1 tsp sesame oil
1 tsp grated ginger
Shake up all the dressing ingredients in a jar. Mix all the vegetables together. 1/2 hour before serving, toss the greens with the dressing. Just before serving, add the Top Ramen, almonds and sesame seeds. Yum! Optional: toss in some fake crab or a couple of handfuls of cooked shrimp.
Smallish dill pickles (not too thick)
Cream cheese
Sliced dried beef (Buddig in the refrigerator section works better than the stuff in a can)
Onion flakes (or whatever you like to flavor your cream cheese with – don’t really need anything though)
Spread softened cream cheese on a slice of dried beef. Put the pickle on one side and roll it up so the beef/cheese wraps the pickle, slice horizontally.
I’m invited to a friend’s house for beer tonight, and I think I’ll make these.
twickster: I should have specified. Leave the Top Ramen uncooked and make sure there are no chunks bigger than a fingertip left uncrumbled. It adds a satisfying crunch to the final salad.
Well, for today’s Halloween potluck I brought ‘Severed Hands and Worms’.
I made a few boxes of Sparkling Mixed Fruit jello and filled a few latex rubber gloves. Frozen them., peeled off the gloves, put’em in a bowl and sprinkled gummi worms over the top. It seemed to go well with the group.
An office full of people from all sorts of different cultures makes a great potluck. We’ve had curries from various parts of India, stuff from China and the Philippines, an Afghan dish or two, and I don’t know what else. Mine aren’t so interesting.
I’ve posted these two before:
Coarsely chop equal parts green and black olives (I use Sicilian and Kalamata), add finely chopped garlic and oregano, and pack into a jar or bowl with enough olive oil to cover.
Seed and coarsely chop Italian tomatoes, add a little onion, some finely chopped garlic, and chopped fresh basil. (Hint: Stack basil leaves, roll into a cylinder, and slice thin. That makes pretty green threads.) Drizzle with a little olive oil. (Make this one fresh.)
Serve with crusty Italian bread, maybe a skinny baguette sliced diagonally.
Another I’ve done is black-bean salad. (You could use red beans, pintos, or whatever.) Mix oil and some kind of vinegar with garlic, chili powder, and oregano. Drain and rinse the beans, add some thinly-sliced onion and sweet or hot peppers, and toss gently with the dressing.
Finally, I did a rice quiche for a party once. Cook rice until done, cool, mix with a beaten egg, and pack into a greased pie plate and up the sides to form a half-inch shell. (Hints: Short-grain rice, a little overcooked, is pretty sticky and may not need the egg. Grease the outside of a pie plate one size smaller, and use that to pack the rice evenly. Turn it before lifting it out or the rice will stick!) Preheat oven to 375 or so. Slice and saute onions and peppers, or whatever vegetables you like. You could use some ham or bacon too. Put all that into the shell, beat enough eggs to fill, and pour them on. Bake 25 minutes or so until a knife in the centre comes out clean. If you want, sprinkle with grated cheese halfway through.
Heh, JT, I brought venison chili once. I did warn the person who was squeamish about that, but I seriously considered telling them after the fact. What?? It was good!
