Lasagna and its Memories & Emotions That Go With It

“I’ll tell you what we don’t eat on the Fourth of July. French toast, Asian food, Lasagna. Are you spotting a pattern here?” This is a known quote by Harry Blazer, one that I dislike. I believe Lasagna should be eaten every holiday. It is my favorite dish because I love the memories it brings to my mind anytime I smell the Italian seasoned dish. I just get overwhelmed with emotions that go hand-in-hand with the memories. I have two most memorable memories.

The first memory took place just this summer. Oh my, my dad forced my older sister, Raakesha, and I to make dinner since my mother was going to be working late that evening. I moaned, complained, and tried to sneak out not knowing that this event would be one of my most memorable. As I hung up my cell phone walked in the kitchen my whole family yelling and causing chaos as usual. I began to cook with my sister.

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We started to do something I like to do when I’m cooking which is act as if I’m on my own cooking show. We first cooked the ground beef, adding the seasonings as it cooked, talking to our imaginary audience as we followed the recipe. After the meat was cooked thoroughly my sister added the jar of Prego Italian Sauce to the meat without draining the grease, which was one of our first mistakes of our many! Then we mixed the cottage cheese, an egg, and 1/2 cup Parmesan cheese.

We were a little short on cottage cheese because my sister ate a tablespoon or so of it when I wasn’t looking.

Next, we cooked the noodles not knowing what the directions meant by “cook until noodles are tender”, so we sat and thought what that would look like then we gave up. As we waited for the noodles to cook and the meat with the other ingredients to simmer we took questions and comments from our imaginary and fabulous studio audience one of the comments by a middle aged women was “You two didn’t add enough cheese in that.”, my sister and I answered almost in synch “it don’t matter cause you isn’t getting none no way with yo hungry self.” We just broke down in laughter almost forgetting the noodles were boiling. As we finished reading the preparation we didn’t know what was the first layer to put on the Pam sprayed baking pan.

The recipe told us “Combine cottage cheese, 1/2 cup Parmesan cheese and egg. Spread 1/2 cup meat mixture in 9- x 13-inch baking dish. Layer half each of noodles, cottage cheese mixture, meat mixture and mozzarella cheese. Repeat layers.” After my sister and I read this we both looked at each other with confused faces. We must have read it four to five more times, still a little confused we just guessed what we thought it meant. As we did the layers we put too much of the meat mixture in the first layers, so when we were doing the last layer there was hardly any of it left so we just kind of packed it with cheese, then the middle aged lady in our imaginary audience yelled out “oh yes, cheeeese!” But we had to get her removed from the studio as she tried to steal the cheese.

She clearly had a thing for cheese, her and the lady in the loud green. We thought the meal was going to be awful as we laughed when we were placing it in the oven. But it wasn’t awful at all, it was pretty good! My family and my friends destroyed the pan of Lasagna, which made my sister and I feel fantastic and proud of ourselves even though we made many mistakes, like not adding the necessary can of tomato paste, oops.

The second memory I think of when I smell or taste lasagna is the day I met my best friend and my first love. December 4, 2007, it was my older cousin Lamar’s 15th birthday. I knew I was going to meet this boy, Marlon, I had butterflies in my stomach, I was so nervous. I even did my hair over when I got to my cousins house. I walked in Lamar’s room expecting to see a muscular teenage boy but instead saw a skinny, fragile boy with beautiful eye-lashes. Although we didn’t start talking until about 30minutes after I had arrived the conversation was good, no dead air. We asked the basic questions that you would ask someone when you’re trying to get to know them:

* What’s your name?

* How old are you?

* When’s your birthday?

* What’s your favorite color?

* Etc.

I was only 13 and in the eighth grade, so I was kind of immature so I said many weird and unusual things, that now when I look back I wondered how he could have liked me, better yet wanted to continue talking to me. In the middle of my laughter I stopped to slowly inhale a familiar scent that I hadn’t smelled in awhile possibly over a year. My mouth began to water, surprisingly I didn’t drawl all over him and me or the table. After I got a whiff of that Lasagna he couldn’t get a hold of my attention.

But once the lasagna was served we both didn’t waste any time waiting for it to cool we dug in and almost burned all the taste buds off of our tongues, we didn’t care we continued, finished, and wanted seconds but didn’t want to look greedy in front of each other. We talked about how many different places we’ve eaten Lasagna at and eventually found out it was both of our favorite dishes. We played videos games, exchanged numbers, and my brothers, my cousin, and I walked him home. We embraced on the corner and I walked back to my cousin’s house skipping and blushing. Then I finally got my second piece of Lasagna happily replaying that evening’s events. And that night I went to sleep with a big smile on my face!

“The trouble with eating Italian food is that 5 or 6 days later you’re hungry again” this is a quote by George Miller that I do agree with. Lasagna is my favorite food because it brings many memories and emotions to my mind when I think about, eat, or smell its mouth watering aroma.