Church Potlucks

Where's Mary and will there be jello?
I grew up attending Lutheran potlucks in an upper middle class suburb of Chicago. I have only dreaded memories of church, sitting still in the hard wooden pews in uncomfortable clothes, listening to the pipe organ, smelling the nasty rosy perfumes and pungent colognes of the old couples around me, quietly dreaming of the day I'd never have to attend church again. The off-key, over the top, vibrato voices bellowing out five verse hymns that seemed to last 20 minutes...they did, however, use real wine for communion, and I think I may have asked for 'another round' several times after I had finally gone through the Wednesday night God hoops of communion classes to get the little wafer and drink. Jug wine for Jesus! The fond recollections I have are quite few, but include the stellar potlucks held in the stuffy community room, under the buzzing fluorescent lights with the brown metal folding chairs and a few cute girls. Mary Bartelt, in particular, and jello with fruit suspended within. Enough time and sinning has passed between me and those long ago dreaded days, that I can now admit some of my favorite recipes come from church lady cookbooks-the kind that have the plastic binding like you can get at Kinko's. The salad sections in these cookbooks feature ingredients like condensed milk, canned mandarin oranges, jello, of course, any number of Campbell's canned or dry soups, canned vegetables, frequently some sort of nut, raisin, carrot combo and the like. I pretty much stuck to the desserts if I could sneak to the line while may parents talked to their friends. Canned goods were so prevalent, I think, because this was the cold war mid-70s. A time that a lot of middle America had a good three to six months worth of non-perishables stored away in the basement in case the Russians nuked us. While we had some name brand goods in our basement-there were a lot of cans that had white labels, black printing and an olive green and black stripe around them-the first wave of American store brand goods, generics.
Anyway, back to potlucks. My grown up, church-free potlucks have seen their share of Velveeta and Rotel dips, the safe and easy vegetable trays, the potentially adventurous, but rarely so, cheese and cracker assortment and baked goods made with whole grains, yogurt and honey that, while healthy and a seemingly good idea that I should probably be supportive of, are just not as good as those made with all purpose flour, butter and real sugar, and maybe just a little more butter.
Now I find myself ready to enter the next wave of potlucks. The kind that people put a little effort into and some real ingredients. I really do enjoy trying a wide variety of foods-particularly those that are fried, contain plenty of sugar, salt and butter, maybe a little bacon in there, too. What I hope will be a monthly event starts this next week, a friends and neighbors potluck. I'll be paying close attention, looking for some friends with some inspiration, some culinary cajones, some devotion to the idea. This may be as close as I get to church again, unless somewhere there's a church of culinarians not afraid to venture out a little bit, away from the drab, away from the cans, some people who truly see the light.