Just One Dish

MyFella's family hosts two separate family reunions a.k.a. potluck lunches a year, one around Christmas time, and the other in early Summer. 

You see, for a couple of years now, MyFella has asked me to attend the meals with him. He said he wanted me to go.  The first go around, I recall being slighly uneasy about it - not that I didn't know enough people there to be comfortable, just that, well, it's not my family.  And it's a family reunion. And exactly why would anyone think I would be going?

But since a good half of the people there I know, and half of them I probably eat with at least once a month anyway, it just sort of didn't matter.  And besides, there was always good food there.

I have finally figured out which two of his aunt's make the great fried okra dish.  His mother usually makes a very good cornbread dressing. And there's always a great assortment of dishes from which to choose.

Which brings me to MyFella.

Last night he said, very clearly, "I'm only taking one dish tomorrow."  Just one.  I heard him.

We had already planned the one - a chicken spaghetti dish that most Southerners will recognize as being a version of Rotel tomatoes and Velveeta.  That's the one.  Super good.  We had already decided that MyFella would boil a chicken and debone it, as we've learned the hard way that a chicken dish is so much better when you take this extra step.  We had already decided that it would be ok to use the penne pasta on-hand and not spaghetti noodles.  The chicken was put in the crockpot before we went to bed - a healthy batch of chopped onion thrown in for flavor.  I awoke to a house that was smelling quite nice with the chicken that was slow cooked on low all night.

So since all was just as we had planned, how was it we walked out of the door with chicken spaghetti, a buttery peppered corn dish, a dessert made with graham cracker crusts and lemon pudding, and an igloo container full of unsweet tea?

Try as I might to recount what we took, I just keep coming up with a whole lot more than "just one dish."