Frugal Foodies: Pop Culture Pot Luck Suppers

Last night, some friends and I kicked off another exciting season of Bravo's hit culinary reality show, Top Chef, with our favorite frugal foodie tradition: the Pop Culture Pot Luck. Especially right now, it's a fantastic way to hone your chops as an amateur chef while at the same time taking a huge chunk out of your monthly fine dining expenses and getting to spend time with other geeks for anything gourmet.

So, how does it work? Every Wednesday night from now until the finale, about a dozen of my favorite foodies will gather for a weekly pot luck supper where we recreate dishes from the past five seasons of challenges on Top Chef (on a dime, of course) and watch the newest episode together. We each take turns hosting a week, and each host then cooks the main entree while everyone else vies for the amuse bouche, appetizer, salad, and dessert courses. Plus, everyone brings a bottle of wine under $10 to $15 to pair with their course. (I brought a bottle of $2.99 Charles Shaw sauvignon blanc from Trader Joe's last night, which was surprisingly good.)

The best part about it is that we created a fantasy league on Fafarazzi.com to track our favorite "cheftestants" and our three-person teams (see mine at left and below) score us points each week for winning challenges, swearing, and using favorite catchphrases from the show, among other things. At the end of the season, we'll award first, second, and third place prizes for the Top Foodies. Just like a regular fantasy sports league, each player kicks in a small amount at the beginning of the season ($25), which we'll use towards prizes and catering the finale party to the theme of the exotic locale in which the final two episodes are being filmed. Last year, we had the fabulous fortune of finding out that the founders and offices of Fafarazzi are based right here in Boston, so we invited them to join us.

To create your own free account and choose a team, and to either create or join a fantasy league, check out Fafarazzi. And, if you haven't already, subscribe to Shoestring Magazine for free now to get the whole scoop—including photos from last night's event with Todd Galloway from Fafarazzi—in next week's issue!