It took me longer than I care to admit to realize a Progressive Dinner was not a bunch of liberals gathering for supper.
A Progressive Dinner is a dinner that progresses throughout an evening. There are different versions depending on region and local traditions. But mostly they follow the same outline: A group of people meet at one location for a first course, usually appetizers. After a short while, they break into smaller groups and go to another location for a second course, usually a light main course or soup and salad. After a while, the groups come together for a final dessert course.
This year, I lobbied our neighborhood organizers of the Progressive Dinner to hold the appetizer course at our community garden, the Mounds Park Community Garden. What a better venue for dining al fresco, I thought, than in a well tended and flourishing garden? There’s plenty of room to set up tables and chairs. If attendees need a break from socializing, they can simply peel off from the crowd and stroll among the plots, taking in the varietal plants and gardening methods that make our garden such a pleasant place to be. (The portable toilet is an additional feature.)
Also, our garden has a small army of enthusiastic volunteers who can help accomplish big big things, like hosting complex events and, literally, moving mountains. Which they were able to demonstrate only two days before the event.
In March, I applied for a delivery of free compost. After a couple of emails back and forth, a delivery of ten yards of free compost was secured with the promise we’d put it to good use and we wouldn’t let the pile just sit there.
But, here it was getting on late May, and our large shipment of compost had not yet shown up. Worried our delivery would be dumped in the middle of our garden days before the Progressive Dinner, I reached out to the supplier to postpone it. Thankfully, I was able to delay the shipment.
For a minute, I was low-key proud of myself for my uncharacteristic forethought and caution in planning. I’d been on the ball and proactively solved a big problem before disaster struck.
To my horror, three days before the event I looked out the window of my office to see a dump truck pooping ten yards of compost right into the middle of our garden. Apparently, our delivery of compost had become lost in a shuffle of paperwork. We might not have gotten it if I hadn’t called—though, my call to postpone the shipment actually sped it up.
I despaired for a half day, vacillating between thinking I could—in a feat of strength and determination I’ve never before demonstrated in my life—single-handedly move the pile on my own. But who was I joking? I would not be able to move the pile on my own. So, I considered moving forward with the event as-is.
Maybe our guests could all just ignore the steaming pile of shit the size of a Chevy Suburban? Afterall, this is a garden, so…
But the next morning I came to my senses. I sent an email and posted a big ask on Facebook to our gardeners:
All hands on deck! Volunteers needed!
Good news, everyone. We just got 10 yards of free organic compost. It's great stuff...black gold! And you're welcome to use it for your plots
The bad news is, it was delivered just before the garden is set to host the Mounds Park Progressive Dinner appetizers. It was dumped pretty much right in the area we were planning to host our guests (gah!).
All garden members have 8 hours of volunteering to complete this year. So, anyone who wants to knock out some solid volunteer hours in a jiffy is encouraged to move dirt into the compost bin to the north (see the movie below). I left a big wheelbarrow and a shovel up there.
Let's move mountains together. Happy hauling!
That morning, I moved as much compost as I could before work. I returned to the garden that evening to move more and, to my astonishment, the pile was gone. All of it had been moved to the compost bin in the north end of the garden. It took our garden volunteers one day, ONE DAY, to move the whole pile. This unexpected hiccup, though inconvenient, was an emotional reminder of how generous, hardworking, and capable our volunteers are.
Maybe we didn’t actually move a mountain, but we basically did. And that is a bigger deal than it seems.
Our garden was now ready for the event which, again with the help of our fabulous volunteers, was decorated with tropical flair: grass skirts adorning the bar, thatch hats and leis on the table, pink flamingos, and a large backdrop of a tropical beach behind the familiar greeting, “Aloha” beset with palms.
I pressed the Saint Paul Parks Department to allow us to use tiki torches (I leased the garden on city park property) but, understandably, they were not keen on open flames in their park, especially during this Spring’s dry spell.
All attendees of a Progressive Dinner are assigned one dish to bring: appetizers, soup or salad, or dessert.
Last year, I signed up for desserts and brought down the house with my very fancy fruit cups: a graham cracker crust filled with a sweet-whipped cream cheese, topped with a tiny bouquet of fruit (blueberries, strawberries, and thin-sliced mangos), glazed with apricot jam and garnished with a zest of lime rind.
When I arrived at the dessert course, there was already a large gathering milling about our neighbor’s garage—the final stop for the ‘24 Progressive Dinner. I thought it would be a courteous gesture to visit the attendees waiter style, offering my tray of delectable fruit cups served with a napkin which, happily, they pounced on. By the time I finally made it to the dessert table my plate was empty, save for a few measly crumbs.
This was maybe frustrating to several neighbors to whom I’d bragged at length about the deliciousness of my fruit cups. Here, I’d talked up a big game and had nothing to show for it but a garage full of satisfied customers. So, maybe it didn’t help when I suggested (I’d had a couple alcoholic drinks by then) they could’ve had their minds blown by my amazing dessert if they’d shown up on time.
This year I aimed to make a similar splash, but for the appetizer course. So I signed up for appetizers. But, what to bring? After weighing a few options, I decided to trust my gut. But the thing is, my gut is not very trustworthy. Which is why I set out to create the unhealthiest appetizer possible: a bite-sized version of the Monte Cristo sandwich.
For the uninitiated, the Monte Cristo is a “sandwich.” Again, depending on the regional variations and local traditions, the Monte Cristo can take many forms. Sometimes, it’s just a ham sandwich with french toast for bread, which…just, no. That is incorrect.
The correct way to make the Monte Cristo sandwich is what I remember ordering at the New Orleans-inspired restaurant at the start of the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland when I was like, nine years old. Lord knows what inspired me, as a nine-year-old boy whose go-to breakfast was pancakes, to order the Monte Cristo. It sounds so bizarre—a deep-fried ham and cheese sandwich topped with raspberry jam and powdered sugar—but it changed my life. And I’ve been chasing the dream ever since.
To pull off this obnoxious appetizer, I enlisted my friend Eli to help with production and moral support. Borrowing his outdoor deep frying equipment and volunteering him as taste-tester during the prototype phase of the appetizer was, I’m sure, a needless test to the limits of our friendship.
With Eli’s support, Jaclyn’s increasingly-limited patience, and the help of my shaky childhood memories, the Monte Cristo appetizer we conjured was, by far, the dirtiest, nastiest, most sluttiest appetizer one could wrap their lips around: deep fried balls of sweet, salty, creamy, piping-hot and ooey-gooey glurp. Tucked inside a crunchy-sweet shell of fried beer batter was a deadly stack of white bread, mustard, mayo, honey ham, smoked turkey, crappy American cheese, rock salt and cracked pepper. All this was finally topped with a homemade blueberry rhubarb jam and a fart of powdered sugar.
I challenge anyone to concoct a more delicious, less healthy sandwich.
The gathering at our garden was well-attended. Our guests seemed to truly enjoy themselves, strolling between the plots and luxuriating in the soft golden hour of a sunny, late-May afternoon.
This was one of the purposes of the community garden: to build a green space in the heart of Dayton’s Bluff—a refuge that invites people to bathe in a nourishing natural environment. It was highly rewarding to see that purpose fulfilled, with so many people brought to our space (many of whom, longtime residents of Mounds Park, shocked to discover such a space even existed) to enjoy themselves and each other's company—in spite of the lethal Monte Cristo bites I’d inconspicuously hidden among the spread of appetizers.
Thankfully, our garden guests tore through the whole plate of fried Monte Cristos. The two previous days I’d spent prototyping and sampling the appetizer had shaved years off my life. The prospect of having to bring home any leftovers made me actually nauseous.
In spite of my anxieties around highly social events and abundant small talk with strangers I highly recommend attending a Progressive Dinner near you. Our event, attended by the welcoming and fascinating people of Mounds Park (and, of course, their tasty foods) keeps me looking forward to the event year after year. It’s an opportunity to break down those weird invisible barriers between neighbors. To share stories, get to know one another, and show off our culinary talents—or, in my case, parade my pathological affair with fried foods for all my poor neighbors to witness.
As with any highly social event, I’m better when I have a job to do.
For the Progressive Dinner, I made myself the unofficial photographer, creeping on folks trying to enjoy a simple conversation. Pulling people this way and that to capture their portraits. I carried my self-appointed role as a documenting pest through to the end of the event. I captured, I think, some pretty vignettes of the many fascinating people who make Mounds Park such a very special place to call home.
With any luck, they’ll allow me to come back and do it again next year.