OMG! I've never seen any of that. 🎀 So funny!

Edited: Oh wait...I went to a potluck once where a woman, who owned a VERY high end jewelry store who liked a LOT of attention, walked in, started asking for pots and prepared spaghetti. By the time it was completed...everyone had already eaten.

I'm laughing. We're going to my sisters and my brothers wife offered a green salad. That means she will walk in with what is basically a grocery bag from the first open store she passes, and ask for salad spinner, cutting board, knife, salad bowl. Then spread herself and ingredients out on the peninsula where we are serving appetizers or the long stretch of counter where we'll arrange buffet.

On DH's side, another SIL will make her mock caesar - or everyone would be disappointed or mad. She'll come with her appropriate sized wooden bowl, garlic to rub into it, everything prepared and divided into separate ziplocks and chilled, ready to toss at the last minute. Salad servers too.

I guess I should be thankful that I've never had that happen. People have asked what can I bring and I said I was still getting the menu down...but I'm kicking myself for not having thought it through. I decided now that I will make a pecan pie (and I will let them know that).. I might also make an apple cake. and have ice cream on hand. I also of course have some nice cookies.

I decided that I am going to ask someone to bring cut up fresh fruit... It's all of 8 or 9 adults and 3 very littles.

Any other stuff will be bonus. I would not enjoy having someone come with fruit to cut up but oh well I guess.

A few years ago this would have been totally bizarre to me, but then my son fell in love. Now my DIL does this all the time. Infact they often 'run to the store' before she can begin to prepare her dish. They do do the preparation but still not what I had in mind. I became aware of this differance in families when I invited her parents to a meal to celebrate the engangement and meet them. She offered to bring a root vegetable. She came with a bag of raw small vegetalbes. That time I did the cooking. People don't seem to GET that perhaps the stove/oven is full if the hostess isn't warned. Different strokes I guess!!

These are all perfect examples. I think the key is just be very specific with people you’re not that sure of. Not much you can do if they never asked what they can contribute, then show up with something needing full preparation. I just don’t get the mindset.🤨

”Then spread herself and ingredients out on the peninsula where we are serving appetizers or the long stretch of counter where we'll arrange buffet.”

LOL, exactly!!!

OOOOOOOO man, that would infuriate me. I already get irritated when people show up with unasked for and unwanted food that is already prepared.

I suppose the only story I had that comes close in when one of my sisters had just had her first child. Her in laws had invited themselves to stay at her house through Thanksgiving and she asked for my help. I flew in the morning of Thanksgiving, and flew out the next morning just to cook the meal for her. Well, her MIL insisted that she had to make a giant pan of her dressing, even though no one wanted it. And the whole time I was cooking, she kept popping into their tiny kitchen to open the oven and poke at her dressing. While she was in there, she would move the things I was working on around so she could put this massive vat of dressing on the stove, poke at it, and put it back in. For someone who claimed it was her signature dish I was quite sure she knew that when you put dressing in the oven, you leave it alone until its baked, no poking required. So she was just doing it to be annoying. Mission accomplished. And it was gross. No flavor at all. It was just wet bread. I was so mad I was ready to find a flight out THAT NIGHT just so that I wouldn't snap and ruin everybodys holiday with my outburst.

I actually think it is really really disrespectful to show up with ingredients and expect to use the hosts kitchen and utensils to make a dish you agreed to bring. It shows you do not care about the people you are sharing food with. Besides that, how RUDE to mess up someone elses kitchen and dishes! Do you think maybe there was a REASON that the host didnt make all the food themselves and asked for contributions?!?!!! HHHMMMMMM?!?!? Perhaps to SHARE the burden of cooking and cleaning with everyone that will be enjoying?!?!!? HMMMMMMMM!??!?!?

I have a dear friend that always brings something that needs refrigerated to our annual weekend picnic at camp without notice. I only have one standard size fridge at camp and it is stuffed with food for the picnic + the food needed for the dz people whom stays the weekend at the camp.

Seems like there are more people who shy away from planning ahead than I realized!

I can't recall anything that crazy happening at a holiday meal of ours, but my cousin's beau is someone who decides his holiday menu at the last minute, which means shopping at the last minute, and wants to make a new and complicated dish for it too, and that drives her crazy - it would me as well - too much chaos!

You need to make it clear to everyone who is bringing something that it needs to be fully prepared before it arrives at your home as there will be no space for anyone to be prepping food. If your oven or refrigerator space is limited, you also need to let them know that they need to bring it hot or in a cooler as appropriate.

Bro brought lettuce and all the makings of a salad. Which I did within minutes. Seriously how hard is it to make it ahead of time, when you live 20 minutes away?

“I actually think it is really really disrespectful to show up with ingredients and expect to use the hosts kitchen and utensils to make a dish you agreed to bring.”

”You need to make it clear to everyone who is bringing something that it needs to be fully prepared before it arrives at your home as there will be no space for anyone to be prepping food.”

Well said, amylou and colleen!!!

Eye opening! I live a sheltered life, I've never run into such behavior! I think I come from a long line of "planners". My family members would never consider doing something like that. I find that to be very odd behavior! I honestly say, I have never seen this happen.

I agree with making it clear. Apparently some people need things to be spelling out and probably very slowly! HAHA!

I remember an office potluck about 40 or 45 years ago, There were about 10 of us, I think, and 5 jello "salads".

I grew up with the host providing the entire meal. If anyone brought something it would be a box of chocolates or a bottle of wine. I still feel this way. If I am hosting I don't want my carefully planned menu being turned into an all you can eat budget buffet style affair.

Now if it's a casual pot luck that would be different, but that would be something for informal times, not holiday meals like Thanksgiving and Christmas. Ditto for any sit down to be served meal. Of course dinner parties have gone the way of the dodo with all the mostly imaginary food issues people have these days.

We went to a thanksgiving dinner where I had chosen to bring the green beans. Another guest, whom I was staying with, was bringing potatoes. As we prepared our dishes at her place, I wondered why she had so few potatoes, and she wondered why I had so many beans. I asked, ”are you bringing some potatoes, or did (the hostess) ask you to bring the potatoes?“ A quick call to the hostess was followed by a run to the grocery store for more potatoes.

The potatoes were just warmed at the destination, and my green beans did need to have a final quick-sautee, but I brough my own skillet and took it home to wash.

@wildchild2x2 I disagree that holiday meals necessarily need to be totally provided by the host.

When it's at my house, I prefer to do the lot, but

a) I can afford it and

b) I spent about 40 years of my life cooking professionally and cooking for a large group doesn't faze me.

However, we live at a distance from all the other extended family members and it's hard to convince them to travel the distance to our home when it's easier, especially for the older members, to meet at the home of a member who lives closer to everyone else (except us).

Not everyone can afford to provide a holiday meal for an extended family. What do you do if no one in the extended family can? Similarly, not everyone feels up to cooking for an extended family.

In our extended family we usually divide up the contributions according to the talents of the various family members. One does the appetisers and the turkey. Another does the vegetables, special family stuffing and gravy. I do the ham (my butcher smokes his own hams and they're delicious) and the desserts (one of the other cooks doesn't do desserts and we learned the hard way that the other one does mostly inedible desserts due to her belief that they need to be "healthy" so weird ingredients get substituted in, most of the sugar is omitted and she doesn't like whipped cream so that's out too :-P).

It works very well and no one has to spend hours and hours prepping and cooking.

I think in some families Thanksgiving is less formal. I remember on some Thanksgivings with extended family when my children were young I would make a turkey but they would bring Italian food. To me, the gathering is to get together, give thanks and have a nice meal of whatever kind. And there were Thanksgivings where people would come and go, so latecomers would go in the kitchen and serve themselves, it was definitely not an orchestrated on time sit down event.

I'm guilty of taking prepared ingredients that need to be assembled to our annual Friendsgiving, but the hostess knows about and has approved of the dishes/preparations ahead of the event. I can't complete the dishes at home because we live too far away from the hostess. I can't imagine showing up with raw, unprepared ingredients with no prior notice.

I agree it depends on the size of the dinner. There is a different cooking a Thanksgiving meal for 8 to cooking for over 20. It does make it nice if everyone contributes a dish. And it does feel good to contribute.

The reunion we host in the summer is pot luck. We don't care if you just bring a bag of chips to share. None of us is going to die of malnutrition. This year a nephew came with his family of 5 for the first time with nothing. They brought a cooler with high price alcoholic drinks, hid it under the table and didn't share it with anyone. Then his wife was right there picking up the candy from the pinata meant for the kids and did the same thing at the money sawdust pile also meant for the kids. The family deemed her as trash. The nephew wasn't much better for not saying anything. We found out later that his sisters declined to come because they were going to be there.

Once my mother (bless her heart) showed up an hour before dinner with a nearly frozen spiral ham & needed to bake it in my one & only oven. This is when all of the refrigerated, previously prepared side dishes for the turkey dinner were to be baked & heated for serving time LOL, She was not much of a cook but still loved by all.

Mostly the family is pretty good, but we have had some misses.

They said they'd bring the beer...but it wasn't chilled.

They said they'd bring the shrimp appetizer...but it was frozen and no sauce.

My otherwise sweet sister-in-law always offers to bring something, and like Morz8's experience, she has to do full assembly spread across our large island that is already in full use, asking for me to dig up the bowls, pans or utensils she needs to make her dish. One NYE she offered to bring punch for the kids. On the way from the grocery store with her ingredients, she called to ask if I had a punch bowl (we do but had to dig out of basement and wash). For casual holiday meals with my siblings and their families, we always have at least two dozen people, so the host does the turkey and potatoes, and everyone else brings salad, rolls, desserts, etc., and usually those things are family favorites, fully prepared and ready to go.

I have to say reading all these hysterical posts makes me have kinder thoughts about "Marney's Thanksgiving Letter". If you have never read it just click here! https://awkwardfamilyphotos.com/2009/11/26/awkward-family-story-the-thanksgiving-letter/

ghoghunter, too funny. I loved the line about now a married woman, being expected to contribute on an adult level.

We were finding that a lot with our (DH's side) huge family. The young marrieds would show up with babies and older, maybe the other grandparents so they wouldn't be left out...and empty handed.

They were just beginning to contribute when Covid arrived and we haven't had a large family dinner 'inside' in the last couple of years. Our last Christmas dinner was held a week early at a club venue with a kitchen, and we filled in with family favorites so the meal wouldn't be too strange.

What helped was one of the nieces is a high school 'life sciences' teacher and she supervises two squads of teen caterers. They cook, serve, clean up for small weddings, events for the cost of the food and only a little more. Plus the school credit they receive.

Our full family gatherings are now more than 60 people, more than any one person can prepare for and manage in winter. Summer when people can spread out outside more doable. Food assignments are a given.

“And it does feel good to contribute.”

I’ve found that to be very true with most people. They seem to enjoy it more for Thanksgiving. You just need to be more specific with some people.