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Halloween potluck party is a great way for you and your guests to
enjoy a variety of tasty treats, saves you a lot of money and
takes some of the stress out of preparing enough food for a
hungry crowd on your own.
A successful potluck does take a bit of
coordination, otherwise you could end up with a
table full of only cookies and cake or chips and drinks. You
also want to plan whether it will just involve treats or
have actual food as well.
Dishes like Sloppy Joes, a
Jack-O-Lantern shaped pizza, creamy dips in a bread bowl and
things like this will add to the buffet and stop the sweets
overkill. You can find recipes for some of these in the
Halloween Recipes
section.
How it Works - For a
potluck, every one of your guests needs to contribute by
bringing one food dish, dessert or beverage. It should be
enough to feed all of the guests, about double the size of a
normal recipe. It depends on the amount of guests that
you'll have. Everyone should be able to have a taste of
everything and maybe go back for more.
The first thing to decide is
whether real meals will be included or just Halloween
treats. The advantage of having at least one or two meal
dishes is that it will break up that "sweets overkill".
having nothing but sugary treats like cookies, cakes,
caramel apples may sound good but with all that sweet you'll
want something salty, too.
Having a meal food like Sloppy
Joes, with topping like thin cut green and red peppers to
use for legs can be made to look like giant spiders. Use
sliced olives for eyes. You could have someone make a couple
of pumpkin shaped pizzas using a large cookie sheet shaped
like a Jack-O-Lantern. Use veggies to make the face on it
and mix mozzarella and cheddar cheese to give it an orange
look.
 Some food can be a bit messy so
be sure to have plenty of napkins on hand along with a
container of hand wipes to use. Also make sure that you have
a guest bathroom ready because, naturally, people will have
to use it to wash their hands and for other things. You can
decorate for Halloween in that bathroom and make sure that
everyone knows that it's the designated party bathroom to
keep them from wandering the house.
For those who are not very good
cooks, bakery bought items are acceptable, but should have a
Halloween theme. You can find cookies and cakes with a
Halloween theme at most grocery stores or mass market
retailers that include a grocery section. You can also find
tortilla chips in the Halloween colors of black and orange.
They go great with a green dip, like avocado or a garden
green veggie dip.
Coordination
- After you decide what kind of food to serve, create
a Potluck Signup Sheet, so that people can write down what
they are going to bring and you can keep track of who's
bringing what.
You will need to let everyone know how many
people are expected, so they can plan accordingly.
Click here for a
downloadable example in MS Word. Since it contains all treat
items, you can always create one of your own using the food
decided on for the party in a program like MS Word.
 Serving - One or more
buffet tables are the usual means for serving a group of
people. Make sure that you have plenty of table and serving
ware. It should all be Halloween themed and match with the
rest of your party decor as best as possible. You can also
find eating utensils that are Halloween themed or go to a
restaurant supply store and pick up large packs of plates,
napkins, plastic utensils that usually come in white but can
also be found in black or brown that will suit your needs.
Place lined trash cans strategically for your guests to discard their
dirty plates. Set up one for paper good, one for soda cans
and bottled water bottles for recycling. If you plan on
saving the plastic utensils to be used again, have a
separate bucket set aside to have guests place them in.
Recycle what you can, like cardboard soda cases, cans,
plastic bottles. Usually dirty paper plates can't be
recycled. If you choose plastic plates, rinse them
afterwards and add to your plastic bin. This might seem like
extra work but you should recycle whatever you can.
With some planning, you can have
a great Pot Luck Halloween party with tons of yummy food and
not much work one the part of one person. Everyone gets to
have fun and gets kudos for the great buffet!
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