A progressive dinner

I do love my street and my neighbours. Many years ago now, three of us got together and figured out how to have a dinner party where you go from house to house. Three households host and each other household brings a dish: an appetizer, main dish or dessert.

We eventually settled in to one of these dinners a year, in November. We always talk about doing one in the spring, when we can sit on porches and decks and balconies, but that rarely happens. We also used to try a February one, but too many people are away skiing or in the Caribbean or generally avoiding Toronto in February.

So, November. Last year, and I think the year before as well, I picked the wrong weekend... hardly anyone was around, no one wanted to host a course, it was just not a success.

Last year two women on the next street got wind of things and offered to host, though! Oh, dear, moving off our block for dinner! It was good, and they were so keen that they said they would do it this year, too!

Then one of them moved to Victoria.

But we gamely carried on, and I whispered from the sidelines while the other did the e-mailing and calendar checking and nudging. As it turned out, last night we had a great success, with several first-timers showing up, and a new house that piqued my real-estate envy quite a bit.

(No one knew exactly how some of the newcomers came to be on the e-mail list. Kind of funny, but a great thing, as it turned out.)

The danger of a potluck sort of meal is, what if everyone brings lasagna? or what if there are seven desserts and no salad? I think that rarely happens, actually, and all the worry and nagging about that is probably not reasonable. For example, I wondered if I should take a piece of pork (whole loins on sale last week, so I got one and cut it up into meal-sized chunks) or some veg. I had heard of a quinoa salad and some other thing that I can't remember, and decided to take the meat... bad choice, there were another three plates of meat, and no green salad, no roasted parsnips and beets, no cauliflower cake. But, all was fine! No one complained (except me, just inside my head) and we all survived and were happy to come together and have a nice meal, most of which we didn't have to prepare! And asking people what they were bringing did not do what it was supposed to, because not everyone responds, people change their minds... just do whatever you like and don't fuss, is now my potluck motto.

I don't have any pictures, because it is kind of rude to take pictures of your neighbours eating dinner. It would have been especially rude, I thought, to take pictures of the one absolutely fabulous place we went for dessert. Collectors, artists, travellers... they had so much cool stuff, so nicely arranged, I felt like I was in a gallery. But, we'll just have to get invited back, because I didn't take pictures.

Next up, one hopes: knitting!