H ngRy eye f e B r u A r y / m A r C h 2 0 1 9 3 3 meAghAn mAurICe Contributing Writers By kate CHRistensen A west end si nals the ret rn o the . ne t onth: Vicars and tarts not yo R MotHeR’s PotL Ck B y the time late February rolls around, I’m visited by a sinking sus- picion that the past months of bone- deep chill, rock-hard snow, calcified ice, and knifelike winds will actually never go away and that Maine has somehow slipped into a brutal, permanent glacial micro-cli- mate, a mini Ice Age of its own, while the rest of the world heats up. Summer was so long ago, it feels like years, decades even, since I’ve gone barefoot in beach sand or picnicked in sunlight. Was that actually me dancing under the stars at that wedding last July? Who was that care- free, lucky person who did those things? Not this hunched, pale, blinking hermit swathed in a thick wool scarf and down coat, my hat’s earflaps frozen to my cheeks, feet insulated in snow boots. Feeling thoroughly sick of the isolation, hunger, and cold, and itching for some so- cial fun—enough hunkering down in paja- mas with my warm dog and husband in the glow of Netflix—there’s only one thing to do: throw a dinner party, fire up the stove, and fill my kitchen with warm bodies to cheer the place up. But dinner parties are expensive and a lot of work, and I owe people payback in- vites for meals at their houses over the past year—how to narrow the guest list down to the six or eight people who will fit around our dining table? Then I hit on the perfect solution, the Tom Sawyer of dinner parties: a potluck. Back in the 1970s, when I was a kid growing up in Arizona, potlucks were the cool, festive thing to do in my mother’s hippie/boho friend circle. I have visceral memories of tables draped in Indian bed- spreads, groaning with pottery bowls filled with turgid lentils and rubbery tofu casse- roles next to platters of zucchini, banana, and carrot bread. Think Seals and Croft on the stereo, wind chimes, incense and pot smoke, plenty of facial hair (men), chunky necklaces (women), and unleashed dogs (and kids). Potlucks always made me a lit- tle queasy. I hid in a corner with a book, picking at a greasy slab of banana bread, anxious to go home. But this is 21st century Maine, a place of scrappy practicality, community-minded- ness, and respect for tradition. A potluck dinner happens to fulfill all of those region- al mandates. I decide it’s time to get rid of the cobwebs/wind chimes and reinvent the whole concept. So I send out emails, inviting about 20 of my favorite people over on a Satur- day night, and telling them to bring food. (Full disclosure: our friends are all good cooks. If you’re going to throw a potluck, this is a huge and indispensable plus. In other words, I wasn’t worried.) “The theme is ‘surprise me,’” I tell them. “The magic of potlucks is that it all works out.” tHings Heat P To follow the general rule of thumb in host-