Potlucking with CCL.

Many years ago (seven, to be exact) I started working at a bank.  The lady who was the trainer—we shall call her Pat—was a little eccentric, but not overly so.  Little did I know, she was a CCL.  I learned this when I started at the bank branch I was assigned to.  One of the other tellers told me that whenever there was a potluck, it was best to avoid anything Pat made.  I asked why.  She explained that she once borrowed a crock pot from Pat & that when she gave it to her, it was filthy.  And, what’s best, is that there was cat feces in the pot itself!  She said the house was disgusting and that there were cats everywhere, but she took it, cleaned it and then never used it.  At that moment, the images of that both scarred me and made me more aware of what potential dangers lurk out there at a potluck.  Ever since then, I have been very conscientious when attending potluck meals. 

One can imagine, then, that our office’s annual Thanksgiving potluck lunch is met with some trepidation when I consider that CCL will be providing a dish.  Typically, she just brings something in a sealed jar or a bag of something I know she just bought at the grocery store.  And I’m just fine eating those items.  It’s when she says she’s making something that I really become worried.  If it weren’t for the fact that she tells me over and over and over again what dish it is she’s making, I may just avoid the whole affair altogether as a precaution to not unknowingly stumble upon something that came from her kitchen. 

She has described her kitchen as being her home’s security system because there is no way anyone but her would know how to navigate their way through the trails she has on the floor, weaving through her piles of garbage.  Thus, if anyone were to open her back door and walk in, they would immediately be detected.  So it was not a surprise (at least to me) when earlier this week she told another colleague that she needed to clean all of the papers off her stove if she was going to make something for the potluck.  (The colleague’s reaction to the paper comment: “On the stove?!?!”)  On one hand, I feel as if I should accidentally knock her dish off the table, in an attempt to prevent the untimely death or severe illness of others; on the other hand, she is making rum balls & told me today she added too much rum to them, so I do know that the alcohol content is high & may have killed off any germs.  It’s such a dilemma, but I wasn’t worried about avoiding them myself…until she informed me that she made sure to not make them with nuts so that I could eat them.  I’ll instead have to remind her, should she question my not eating them, that I don’t drink alcohol and can’t stand the taste of it in anything.

Meanwhile, she debated multiple times today as to whether or not she should add more powdered sugar to them to try to reduce the liquid content and make them moldable into balls—or if she should just dump it into a pie pan, sprinkle it with powdered sugar and then let people scoop it out onto their plate as rum dough.  Doesn’t that just sound delicious?  Mmmm mmmm.  Heavenly. 

I’m just hoping she remembers to utilize the nets she bought specifically to try to keep the cat hair out of her food.  Afterall, no one enjoys a pile of rum dough plopped onto their plate with a hair ball in it…