Saturday morning I made for breakfast the Baked Sweet Omelet from Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything.  I didn't bother to separate the eggs (because in my experience, the product after folding in the beaten egg whites is indistinguishable from the product made from whole beaten eggs), but mine was not nearly as poofy as the ones pictured, so maybe it's time to try separating eggs again.

Then we walked to Whole Foods and picked up some dried white beans, kale, mild Italian sausage (it was on sale, so even better), heavy cream (there was only organic, not conventional, so that more than offset any savings we might have had from the sausage), gingersnaps (they only had gluten-free, but they were really quite good), and ricemellow creme (since that was all they had, no marshmallow creme: but this was just as well, because it turned out there were vegetarians at the potluck after all).

When we got home, I made the sausage and kale variation of White Beans, Tuscan Style from How to Cook Everything (because it was on his list of 100 Make-Ahead Recipes, which I figured would be good candidates for a potluck), which is slightly different from described there in the following ways:

Add six cloves garlic with the sage.
While the beans are cooking, cut the Italian sausage into one-inch slices and brown well in a skillet (in its own fat).  When the beans are starting to get tender, add the sausage and one cup finely chopped kale.
My recipe also called for four cloves minced garlic (instead of two tsps), and two tablespoons olive oil (instead of one).

While the beans were cooking, I made Spiced Pumpkin Mousse Trifle from Every Day with Rachael Ray.  I've made it a couple of times before, once for Thanksgiving, and once for Christmas Eve, and it always goes over well, although it never looks quite like the picture (maybe I chop the gingersnaps too finely?).

While I was folding together the mousse, I took my eye off the beans for perhaps five minutes, and whereas they had been cooking for about two hours without changing at all, in those five minutes they turned to mush.  I don't think it was a disaster; it was just quite unexpected.

Morgan said he liked the beans, but I'm not sure I'd make them again.  They weren't difficult, but did take a lot of time (if I could adapt the recipe to a slow-cooker that would be less of a deal-breaker), and just weren't terribly impressive.  If I were to make them again, I might ease off the garlic (the ten cloves were enormous), and cut the sausage into smaller pieces.  Or just leave out the sausage.

The pumpkin mousse was appreciated (possibly because it was the only dessert there), but I would say the hits of the potluck were Rachel's chili and Amanda's quesadillas.