When I was little girl my mom brought our family’s own plates and silverware to pot luck suppers. I recall that she would set our places on one of the big rectangular tables, two settings on one side and two opposite. When we children were done running around the church or community hall and it was time to eat, I could figure out where my family would sit by recognizing the familiar blue-and-white Currier & Ives design and the silver-plated flatware. Two coffee cups marked my parents’ seats, and two drinking glasses showed where my sister and I would sit.
Of course there were paper plates at that time in the 1950s. We used them on picnics as I recall, but a potluck supper called for real dishes. We brought them in one basket or paper bag, and the casserole offering or cake in another. We took them home to wash them. It was no big deal, not an imposition, and believe me if it was, I’d remember my mother belly-aching about it.
It was actually charming to see the colorful patchwork of dishes on the tables, each family unit identified by a different set of patterns. It was homey to hear the clattering of the silverware and china. I don’t recall that any of our dishes were ever smashed in transit. The adult in charge of carrying them exercised a normal level of care.
There was no need for a run to the dump afterwards with big, black plastic bags full of trash bulging with refuse. I don’t even remember seeing big plastic bags then. In short, it was a fairly genteel way to eat, everyone cleaned up after themselves, and there was next to no waste of any sort. We didn’t even have to consider how to recycle the stuff. Why did we ever decide to switch to plastic foam or paper plates, plastic cups, and that terrible plastic flatware that will never in a thousand years disappear from the earth? It is not a pleasant experience eating from paper plates or feeling plastic clatter on your teeth. I can’t even think of sanitation reasons for using throw-aways, nor can I conceive of any possible litigation that might arise from bringing your own dishes.
In the past twenty or so years, we have made what seems to me to be a shocking shift in potluck suppers to using throw-aways for serving food. What a nuisance it is, too, particularly for islanders who have to acquire the plates, cups, and flatware from the mainland, spend some of their hard-earned cash on the supply, and then have to bag it all up, pay to put a dump sticker on the bag, and then find someone willing to go to the transfer station with it. It is disgusting, when you think about it: a whole set of chores and expenses easily circumvented by instructions to participants to bring their own. Among Maine islanders, I hear that the sane population of Isle au Haut continue to take china to potlucks. I wish Islesboro folks did.
It is going to be like turning around a oil tanker to change this awful habit of ours. I take a stab at it from time to time, encourage any committee I am on to use the china plates or flatware (if there are any) at the hall. It takes only a little more effort to rinse them and put them through the big, powerful dishwasher that most places have installed, and most events have people milling around asking what they can do to help out anyway. But if people brought their own, no one would even need to rinse and put away. I hauled our own plates, a fork, knife, spoon, cup and even our own cloth napkins to a potluck supper and dance we attended recently. A couple other people said they would, too, but they forgot.
We see these big gorgeous picnic baskets for sale equipped with attractive place settings, sometimes even wine glasses, and napkins, easily converted to a potluck basket. Or if you are a die-hard shopper, you could assemble your own potluck basket by buying all the parts. Back along, when I operated a small party rental business, my partner, Ginny, made terrycloth bags out of two towels big enough to encase our big china platters so we could prevent chipping and dinging. The caterers simply rinsed and slid the platters into the bags, which we could throw into the wash. You could make bags for your plates, and another for the flatware. Why, an organization could make some money by creating these sets for people, putting them into baskets and selling them. In fact, they could set up a table at a potluck supper to sell them to the poor souls who came dish-less until every one had a set.
So why not?
Sandy Oliver cooks and writes on Islesboro.