bah.

My congregation is having a pot-luck dinner tonight after earlier-than-usual Shabbat services. The arrangements are clearly family-oriented, not single-person-oriented, but that's ok. But I just realized that I misread the announcement in one important way: I parsed it as "bring a main dish for your family, and also a side dish to share". A more careful reading implies that they meant "bring both to share". (It's too late to call and ask.) Which means the salmon filet sitting at home isn't going to cut it.

So I ran out to the store near where I work. They don't have salmon today, so I picked up different fish (orange roughy) and will improvise something -- probably broiling it with Italian spices of various sorts and then cutting it up into small pieces and making a sort of stew with it and tomato sauce. I think that'll work, and will also survive being not exactly hot by the time I carry it 20 minutes through the cold and get it onto the table. (Aside: I can avoid more potential kashrut problems with other people's dishes by being parve/dairy instead of meat tonight. The pasta salad I made last night is parve, so so far I'm both meat-free and dairy-free.)

And did you notice the part about dinner after Shabbat services? No way this is still going to be warm. Salmon works cold; I don't know how well this will work.

Now when I walk in I'm sure someone will offer to take my dish and heat it up. That happened last time. Note that this will be after Shabbat has started, so I will decline. I'm not sure yet if I'll cooperate if someone else at my table decides to take it away and heat it up. I'll probably permit that on the theory that it's not my Shabbat violation.

The typical person coming to this dinner will cook something at home, drive it over to the synagogue right away (around 6pm), and then heat it up in the oven right before we eat. Sometimes it's hard to be observant in a mostly-non-observant congregation.

Next time I'll probably punt on the dinner.