Skip to footer

The thrifty joy of hosting a potluck

Potlucks let you spend evenings with people whose company you enjoy while also enjoying very inexpensive food, Hamm writes.

|
Ann Hermes/The Christian Science Monitor/File
A studio shot of ingredients used in italian cooking and baking. Hosting a potluck is a great, inexpensive way to eat well and enjoy the company of friends, Hamm writes.

Once every other weekend or so, Sarah and I will invite over some friends for dinner. We usually suggest that they bring something along with them – a beverage, a side dish, a dessert. We provide the main course, whatever that might be.

The end result of that effort is that we usually wind up having a multi-course meal at a table with a lot of our friends and all we had to do was to buy and prepare one food item in bulk, which usually ends up costing less than a full meal for just our family of five.

Because we’ve hosted this meal, the idea spreads. We’re invited to the dinners that other people are hosting, and the cost for us is even less: one side dish or a beverage.

Potluck dinners mean that our meal costs are usually lower than a family meal at home, plus they’re guaranteed to be social events by design.

In other words, potluck dinners are among the biggest bargains on our social schedule.

So, how do you get the ball rolling on this?

My suggestion is to start by hosting a dinner yourself. Simply invite a small number of friends over for dinner one evening. I would suggest not making the crowd too big for the first time.

When you invite them, ask each friend to bring one side dish or one dessert. Give them some freedom on what to choose. You can do that by having a flexible main dish.

Then, simply prepare a main course. Try to choose something everyone will like, at least to the best of your ability.

When everyone shows up, set the food and dishes out and enjoy!

It may take a few hostings for others to get the idea to host themselves, but if you make it look easy and fun, they’ll eventually be tempted to jump on board. Ideally, you’ll get a rotation going.

Potluck dinners are a big part of our family’s social calendar. We get to spend evenings with people whose company we enjoy while also enjoying very inexpensive food and often having most of it prepared for us. You can’t beat that!

This post is part of a yearlong series called “365 Ways to Live Cheap (Revisited),” in which I’m revisiting the entries from my book “365 Ways to Live Cheap,” which is available at Amazon and at bookstores everywhere. 

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to The thrifty joy of hosting a potluck
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Business/The-Simple-Dollar/2012/1018/The-thrifty-joy-of-hosting-a-potluck
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe