Potluck of Horror

Oh, man. I keep forgetting to post about the terrible potluck experience I had last weekend.

It was a group of about 100 people, and most of them were complete strangers.

There was nothing for me to eat, but I figured that would be the case. So I brought along my own awesome veggie burgers. Seriously, these things are the shiitake.



For my contribution to the potluck, I brought two batches of jelly doughnut cupcakes and a big container of roasted eggplant/red pepper dip with organic flaxseed tortilla chips.

I drew cute little signs for the food that listed the ingredients and potential allergens, since I didn't know if anybody there would have food allergies. (And I was secretly hoping there would be other vegans who would be happy to discover some goodies.)

People treated my food like it was poison. Most turned their noses up at the "vegan" label.

I saw people laughing at my signs. "Who cares?" said one lady as she gnawed on an almost-raw hamburger.

One person brought a big bowl of ranch dip and stole most of my chips because they neglected to bring their own.

Then someone started mixing the ranch dip with my roasted eggplant dip.

And then some lady came up with the bright idea to eat the ranch/eggplant mix with Cheetos and proceeded to dip the Cheetos DIRECTLY in the serving bowl. She used a few Cheetos to pull up great big globs of dip, used those Cheetos to sop up some ranch from the other bowl, ate the whole mess of it, licked her fingers and stuck them back in my bowl with more Cheetos.

Ugh. People are gross.

On the up side, the eggplant dip was really good before it was tainted. It's a Barefoot Contessa recipe that I found via the PPK forums. Here's how to make it:

2 medium eggplants, peeled
1 red bell pepper, seeded
1 red onion, peeled
2 garlic cloves, minced
3 tablespoons good olive oil
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
2 tablespoons lemon juice
2 tablespoons tahini
3 tablespoons chopped parsley, plus extra for garnish

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.

Cut the eggplant, bell pepper, and onion into 1-inch cubes. Toss them in a large bowl with the garlic, olive oil, cayenne and salt and pepper. Spread them on a baking sheet. Roast for 45 minutes, until the vegetables are lightly browned and soft, tossing once during cooking. Cool slightly.

Place the vegetables in a food processor fitted with a steel blade, add the lemon juice and tahini, and pulse 3 or 4 times to blend. Taste for salt and pepper. Transfer to a bowl and add the chopped parsley. Garnish with extra parsley. (I subbed fresh basil, because I didn't have any parsley.)