The Salad Bowl

[ThinkGlow]

DH and I have been invited to a BBQ by acquaintance-type friends next month. We're not close to them but hope to be, they're lovely. But we're quite different finance and upbringing wise (relevant). I'm Aldi, they're Harrods.

As I always would do, I've offered to bring wine/chocs and what I'd call a posh salad (feta/cous cous/pine nuts naice enough?!) and they said that'd be great.

Then I realised I couldn't possibly use the plastic 30p Wilkos mixing bowl that I usually use to house a salad. I'm pretty sure I'd spontaneous combust with shame offering my homemade salad in a plastic, battered and well used, bowl. So I've bought a posh one.

But what's the take-back etiquette?! I have zero knowledge of how to use a teaspoon correctly never mind what the correct/non-offensive way of taking back my salad bowl would be. But I do want to take it home. I spent too much on it to donate it to them

Do I take it back with whatever is left in it? Or sort of empty the contents for them?! How can this not be done awkwardly?!

Help.

I am also obsessed with bowls. Have a big draw full of them.

I have those plastic bowls - really handy for kids birthday parties!

It’s a lovely bowl, but what a dilemma...

Take lovely bowl to BBQ to show off or keep it home safe but no-one knows you’ve got such a lovely bowl?

I'm now searching online for a new naice salad bowl 😂

DH and I have been invited to a BBQ by acquaintance-type friends next month. We're not close to them but hope to be, they're lovely.
I would transport the salad in the tupperware. When you get there, offer your naice bowl for decanting the salad into (she can decline, if she wants her own matching serving dishes). Naice bowl has your name written in Sharpie on the bottom. Do not retrieve bowl at the end of the party. Host will have to arrange the return of the bowl which gives you another interaction, which turns 'acquaintance' into 'friend'. Or does that only happen in film scripts?

When we have had BBQ's we have had people bring their own bowls or tins with desserts. They always take them home with them. There is usually someone who insists on doing the washing up so they get washed and then taken home. I used to put out my salads in nice bowls but now I just use disposable or plastic ones from the supermarket. Anytime I have brought a bowl with salad or dessert it has always come home with me. People do not want their kitchen cluttered up with other people's bowls etc. Imagine if everyone who brought a nice bowl just left it there and the poor hostess had to go around trying to find who they all belonged to. Also if this happened all the time they would soon be knee deep in other peoples things. Someone once left a plate at my house never found out who it belonged to. It was a ordinary white small plate. People bring stuff in all types of containers from nice bowls to Tupperware etc. I really think you are overthinking this.