August Workplace Potluck - Thai Meatballs

I kind of shot myself in the foot with this month's potluck. I'm in charge of scheduling them at work, and Tuesday, August 24 seemed like a good day way back in July.  That was before a one-day business trip got scheduled on the Monday before. As in, I was up at 4:30 am, spent 8 hours driving (round trip) and got back home at 11:30 pm. Ugh

I set my alarm a half hour early on Tuesday and ended up sleeping through my snooze alarm. Of course. Lucky for me, I had picked the easiest recipe in the world to make and still managed to have something made for my office potluck AND make it into work at my usual time.

I've rechristened these Thai meatballs, although the original recipe is called Slow Cooker Meatballs in Peanut Chile Sauce from A Year of Slowcooking. I hade made this recipe once before and it was very well received, so I didn't feel too guilty making it twice in the same year since it fit with our Asian theme for this month's potluck.

All I did was dump a lot of peanut butter (around 4 tablespoons), a can of coconut milk with cream, some fish sauce, some white sugar and sriracha sauce in a crockpot:

I topped it with a full bag of frozen turkey meatballs and lugged my slow cooker to work. After cooking for 2.5 hours on high, they smelt wonderful and were cooked to perfection:

Because I dumped extra amounts of the ingredients in (and apparently, didn't grab a big enough bag of meatballs), there was a lot of extra sauce. Which wasn't a bad thing, since it tasted almost like a curry and worked well spooned over the white rice I made (I also lugged my trusty rice cooker to work).  Five minutes of prep for one fantastic dish, I couldn't ask for more.

Here's a shot of our loaded potluck table - we had sushi (ordered from a takeout place), an Asian slaw (with a lovely vinegary tang), an Asian noodle salad (sweeter with lots of almonds for crunch) and a coworker's version of spicy beef with peppers. Delicious!

Since I have one of our team's August birthdays, a coworker asked me what I wanted for dessert, which is a chance since I'm the one usually making the desserts.  I told her simply "nothing chocolate" and "something fruit-based" and she produced a homemade blueberry pie that was to die-for.  As I say every time we have one of these things, I was just so incredibly proud of my coworkers for producing such a great spread.