Food Rule #1 What Can I bring?

Food rule #1 What can I bring- if you ask me over for dinner, don't expect me to say "What can I bring" If you say you are having a pot luck I will say What can I bring?

Lets say your friend calls and invites you over to dinner. Do you automatically say "what can I bring?" (I don't.) If you are the inviter,  aren't you suppose to provide the food and entertainment? If you don't intend to supply all the food wouldn't you call it a pot luck? 


When I invite someone over for a meal, my intentions are to take care of everything. The food, the entertainment, even the dishes. You are my guest.

There are exceptions to this rule. Thanksgiving and/or Christmas. I can use all the help I can get.

Here is my favorite story about being a dinner guest.


One day my "friend" calls me and says her and her husband would like me and my gig low to come over for a BBQ. Ok great I say. Long pause. Can you bring the salad she says. Ok. So my gig a low and I show up for dinner at my "friends" house with the salad. The wife says Oh, I am sorry I am running late, do you want to go to the store with me? Ok I say. We drive to the store, where the wife lists the things she needs to buy.

1. The Meat
2. The Bread
3. The Salad dressing (she informed me that I could buy it because I did not bring it)

We get to the meat counter at the store and my "friend" says What kind of meat are you going to buy? What? I say. She says you buy your meat and I will buy our meat. So I bought Turkey burgers for me and my gig a low. 

We go back to my "friend's" house. My "friend"unwraps the meat, puts it on a plate and sets it on the kitchen counter. It was a warm summer evening, every window at my "friends" house was open. No screens on the windows. So there were flies landing all over the food that my "friend" had set out. Her dogs had raided the garbage cans so there was garbage spread from one side of the kitchen to the other. She picked up the garbage and promptly set the unopened garbage bag next to our unprepared food, enticing more flies to come in for a free meal. I am staring at my gig a low as if to say get me out of here.

My "friend's" husband comes in and gets the meat. We go sit outside to chat while he is BBQing. My "friend's" husband starts petting and scratching his long haired dog with the tongs he is flipping the meat with. Are you kidding me? That is disgusting. My gig a low and I ate the salad and made some lame excuse why we had to go home. That was the beginning of the end of our friendship.