A potluck a day…

Keeps the lunch stress away.

Photo by Taylor Kiser on Unsplash

A few months ago, in the middle of a very hectic week, a friend and I accidentally potlucked for lunch one day. We were talking about how she’d prepped a lot of salad and no protein, and I’d cooked enough protein to last all week and was too tired to cut up salad. We decided to share, and so the next day, we brought it all to work and were able to enjoy delicious, wholesome lunches at half the effort.

Our other friends noticed and we all decided to take turns cooking for one another everyday so we’d have to worry about lunch only once a week. Genius? We think so. Check out some of our potlucks¹ we documented here:

• Chandni’s Pasta alla vodka

• Aina’s Barbecue Chicken

• Kiran’s Hot Garlic Sesame Chicken

• Treena’s Chicken in Marinara Sauce (with a side of drama!)

Read on and I’ll tell you just exactly why you might want to try this system at work, and our top tips to set you up for potluck success.

My Potluck Crew

Here are our top 4 reasons you should potluck with your work besties in 2024:

1. You only have to cook once or twice a week.
   While we started out as two friends sharing lunch, our lunch potluck crew grew and soon we were 4 of us—one cooking an entire meal for each day of the week, and we’d order in on Fridays; meaning we’d gone from stressing about lunch everyday to basically cooking once a week.

2. Delicious surprises everyday!
   When I was cooking for myself everyday, I got bored really really fast. I didn’t think beyond the ingredients I usually buy and didn’t put in any effort beyond the bare minimum. Thanks to our potluck system, I was exposed to so many new flavours and lovely little nuances that are so close to my heart now (like throwing peanuts into your salad, what a game-changer). And since I’m only cooking once a week, I actually feel like making an effort.

3. More mindful eating, less mindless scrolling.
   It’s really easy to get lost in endless meetings, deadlines, presentations and spreadsheets at work. I’ve also done the ‘eating cup noodles at my desk while I caught up with my doomscrolling's quota for the day’ thing. Not any more. On most days, we block off an hour on our calendars for lunch, sit down at a table with plates and proper cutlery, heat up our food and look at each other while we have non-work related conversations.

4. Your wallet will thank you
   Our lunch bills had become ridiculous before we implemented this. 400 bucks for a salad? 550 if I want more protein? That’s over 2k per day for the four of us. No thanks. You don’t need to be very good at math to figure that you won’t spend all that cooking a decent, healthy meal for 4 people.

Cooking for your friends is no different than cooking for a family. Everyone will have different favourite foods and preferences. Now, since we’ve been doing this for a few months, we consider ourselves experts. We’ve made the mistakes, had the fights and made up after—all so you don’t have to.

Here are our top tips that will set you up for potluck success:

1. Quantities matter
   Appetites aren’t made equal, so you’ll need to discuss how much you eat on an average day based on your health goals. Detail out protein, salad, carbs, everything so whoever is cooking for the day can make sure they bring enough. Trust me, this fight is not a fun one to have.

2. Avoid people’s meh foods
   Obviously you won’t bring in food that someone on your crew is allergic to. But we’ve found that it’s no fun to bring in food that they deem ‘meh’ either. They just won’t enjoy lunch and will end up ordering something later on leading to the cook feeling super rejected and sad.

3. Find a financial balance
   You’ll need to find a way to balance out how much you’re all spending on your lunches. In my city, chicken and paneer tend to be the most reasonable sources of protein versus fish or red meat, so we stuck to those two. They were also the only two sources all 4 of us unanimously agreed to eat everyday.

4. Keep it low stress
   There will be days when it’s someone’s turn and they aren’t up to it. Life gets in the way sometimes. So keep things flexible enough to either swap days with them or order in instead. Don’t make one another feel guilty—you don’t need more anxiety in your life.

That’s it. Now fire up your work besties group chat, send them this article and plan your potluck for the coming week. My friends and I hope you get as much joy out of this as we have. If you have any questions at all, drop it in the comments.

See you in the next one!

1. We know taking turns cooking isn’t exactly a potluck, but we call it one anyway. It makes lunch fun for us, so let it be, please.