The bride's lasagna

Two book contracts and a summer camp to run this June have me hiding under my desk eating crackers before the kids find me and demand dinner and clean underwear. I think it's overrated. The dinner, I mean. I'm not that great of a cook. If you notice, the only recipe I have on the blog is for granola because I can bake like a boss but when it comes to things like, oh, I don't know... lasagna, it falls apart a little.

When I was a newly married girl, I thought it was my duty to stuff my skinny husband until he popped out a new appendage. So I drug out the cookbooks and happily scoured  recipes for apparently the most artery-damaging foods on the planet for supper and dessert. Weekly blueberry pies, Baked Alaska, assorted meals with green pepper (they were cheap) and my mother's fail-safe recipe for lasagna. However, this meal I was going to make it my own. I'd put my own stamp of lovin' on it so my innocent husband would adore his bride and her growing waistline.

The sauce was naturally homemade, the noodles freshly done and cranked out from a tiny pasta maker. I was covered in tomatoes and flour and I was going to RULE bride-dom with this dish.

Hmmm, what was missing? Tomatoes? Onion and tons of garlic? Basil and oregano from my windowsill garden of our teeny apartment overlooking the dumpsters and Glisan Street in Portland, Oregon? Ahhhhh, yes. The cinnamon. This bad boy needed a healthy heap o'cinnamon because I had read *somewhere* that Mexican dishes used a bit of the bark to spice up their flavors. Yes. Say it with me now, "Stacey. Lasagna is not Mexican and you're a complete boob." I'm not even sure Mexican meals have cinnamon, maybe they meant cilantro?

The lasagna was huge. I baked for ten even though there were only two of us. My groom looked on in love as I dished out my latest culinary achievement and took a huge bite. And spat it out back on his plate and ran out of the room since the cinnamon had been a little on the heavy side and had caused some sort of reaction to his sinuses. Whatever. The big baby.

Seventeen years later, I still hear about that fiasco. It's taken on Bigfoot sighting proportions in legend and I'm used as a cautionary tale to our five daughters when I try to teach them to cook. I think I'd better stick with granola.

10 comments:

  1. Love it! My husband has a story about pesto, or 'pond-scum' as he loving refers to my prize meal. Once I baked pumpkin bread with whole cloves in it. Who knew cloves come ground or whole? Being a good cook is way overrated! With camp and those book contracts, sounds like you will be one busy lady. You'll do great!

    Keep swimming, just keep swimming...

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  2. LOL...Cooking I can do....but I married a picky eater.

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  3. I figure what doesn't kill him makes him stronger. He should thank me, really. ;)

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  4. *reminds my husband to be happy - VERY happy - that he is my 4th husband instead of my first.*

    ( 1st husband, BTW, is dead.)

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  5. Ohhh, I'm sorry I waited so long to read this. You are hilarious!

    Did I ever tell you about the first meal Ibis and I cooked together? I tried to make tortellini with red sauce and he hijacked the meal and made it Mexican. So apparently you CAN make Italian dishes Mexican, they just won't taste good.

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  6. So cute. My mom's famous legend was the first time she cooked a chicken with the little bag of "chicken extras" still inside of it.

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  7. My grandmother did something similar for her first bridal Thanksgiving! The family was gathered around the table and Grandpa cut into the turkey only to discover a gingham dishtowel that she'd used to dry the interior of the bird roasted inside.

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