Why is it that the best items at any potluck are always prepared by people who shouldn't have time to cook?

Busy people. People with three kids, a full time job, night classes, and a post-operative dog with a cone around its head.

"Oh, I just threw it together. The truffles are from my garden."

They humble the other cooks and get lots of requests for the recipe.

And then they apologize for it. "Sorry it's a little crumbly. I normally churn my own butter for that recipe, but I was so tired after the triathlon."

My own feelings about potlucks are mixed. On one hand, I get to eat good, home-cooked food. On the other hand, I'm usually expected to contribute something. This allows me to bring my personal food related shortcomings to the masses. I'm not very good at meal planning. In my day to day life, I just panic three times a day as hunger sets in, and then forage like a bear. I thought getting a girlfriend would help, but it turns out you have to get one that likes to cook.

Maybe it's stupid to get all worked up over a potluck, but I find them stressful. First of all, I don't want to let my friends down. I could just buy a vat of Costco potato salad, but isn't that kind of like saying that the culinary needs of my friends aren't important to me?

Adding a little more pressure is the sense of competition that everybody feels but nobody talks about. It's not that I feel I have to bring the best thing, but I sure don't want to bring the worst. (How sad that I'm worried about a goal as attainable as "better than the worst.")

My friends, out of sympathy or maybe fear of food poisoning, often put me down for beer. Though this typically means spending more money than if I'd brought, say, garlic bread, it's worth it to ensure quality. This may be an El Nino year, which calls for the restorative powers of such hale brews as MacTarnahan's IPA and the seasonal Full Sail Porter.

You can buy your way out when you're assigned dessert, too. Most local bakeries make great desserts, but look for me at The Buttery in Santa Cruz for cakes and The Farm Bakery and Cafe in Aptos for big beautiful fruit tortes. And I don't think I've ever been to a big holiday dinner where there weren't a couple pies from Watsonville's Gizdich Ranch. Yum-ay.

I've seen people buy food at a restaurant, and then try to take credit for making it. Now that's what I call desperate for praise. Passing yourself off as the creator of apple glazed duck with caramelized fig sauce is tough sell when I know for a fact that your diet is 90% "mac-n-cheese" and 10% toast. But hey, I won't tell. I like duck. Goes good with beer.

Many people employ a simple potluck strategy: work out a winning dish, and do it every time. But if it's really good, it'll be labeled your "specialty" and you'll have to make it for the rest of your life. "Here comes Jason and his world famous devilled eggs! Hip-hip hooray!" Eventually Jason is buying mayonnaise in bulk, and getting steadily more nauseated by the smell of boiling eggs. Years from now, it will come up in therapy sessions.

My brother Johnny has a potluck specialty: an artichoke dip appetizer. It's really good, but it's kind of a problem to entrust appetizers to the chronically late. You've got to match the person with the food assignment. Don't assign garlic bread to someone who cooks exclusively with a microwave oven, and think twice before entrusting dessert to a vegan.

Sometimes you can defy tradition by bringing a pizza. Nothing says "I reject the high-brow culinary hypocrisy of this situation by bringing this salty, oily, populist dish" like a pizza cut into 32 pieces. On the other hand, it might also say, "I'm a low-brow culinary moron." Depends on the crowd.

Pizza is one of the classics of "ironic potluck," wherein you bring foods that are "so out they're in." Other classics include buckets of fast food chicken, Spam with little toothpicks, and desserts made with alternating layers of Jell-O and banana pudding. But irony is a tricky thing. In many circles, KFC and Jell-O are perfectly normal, and an ironic dish would be something with pesto. I'm sure my bringing beer to a party full of wine drinkers is sometimes seen as right on the border between camp and bad taste, but that's when I'm happiest to have a good beer at my side.