It’ll probably be too late in the evening to get the local paper to list your casserole as the hottest dish in the city, but it’s rarely too late for word of mouth.

Once they know its food, you can start creating buzz. Grab a helping of that green bean casserole or whatever other garbage you brought and choke it down in front of the other guests like a trash compactor. First, you need to make sure people understand that the dish is actually edible food. When your dish isn’t being eaten, there are a few passive-aggressive tactics worth trying to save the event, at least for yourself. Your dish is there all alone, much like you, too uncomfortable to converse with the other dishes and too unappealing to be shoved in a guest’s mouth. Or a second dreaded scenario: Your offering is actually served on the snack table and no one touches it. You flash back to the time you went to pick up your sexy ex at the airport, only they never showed up once again you’re stuck, alone and limply holding a sign that says “Casserole.” (Your ex, oddly, was named Casserole, too.) You keep gazing toward the kitchen hoping it will emerge. Whatever level of effort you put in, you will always feel like a hero when the host opens the door, eyes brightening with a cry of “Oh, you shouldn’t have.”īut then something happens as the evening progresses: the dish, so appreciated initially, doesn’t reappear. If you’re feeling lazy, you might just grab some taquitos at a gas station on the way. Perhaps if you’re really feeling motivated, you pour your heart into a homemade casserole. It’s a nice lamp who wouldn’t enjoy the party more because of that lamp?

Maybe those baby carrots or that one beer or the lamp. If you’re in this situation, you’re at least mature enough to know to bring something as an offering to a party, even if that something is just a hodgepodge of what you already have at home. In other words, your typical party experience.īe kind to yourself, though. Or you can pretend to relax and have a good time while painfully tearing yourself apart inside. You can storm out in a huff and eat your room temperature macaroni salad while crying in the car. How you handle this may determine whether you’re invited back or banned. It’s the adult equivalent of being picked last in sports: that frightening moment when the dish you brought - one you either slaved over or bought last minute in a panic at a grocery store - isn’t being served or eaten at a party.

Is pot luck one word