Friday, April 1, 2011

It Strikes Me Funny: A sale on lasagna and the ultimate chef challenge

[The following column was first published in The Londoner in May, 2003. I dusted it off today because it relates well with a recently posted story, i.e., Live Small and Prosper PT 3: It’s time for Frontier Stew]


A sale on lasagna and the ultimate chef challenge

Frozen lasagna in a grocery store’s flyer caught my eye. Five pounds - $9.99.

That’s incredible, I thought. Who can beat that?

“When you make lasagna how much does it cost?” I asked my wife Pat.

“It’s pricey. Why?” my wife inquired as she looked up from her magazine.

“Can we make better lasagna than this for less money?”

“Ours might be thicker and tastier but I doubt we could beat the price,” Pat suggested.

I heard a touch of cynicism in her voice. The Harrison cook-off was born.

In the past I have been involved in a cook-off or two at Aberdeen Public School. Staff members vied for the prize of light-hearted, short-lived cooking lory and meager recognition. By the time afternoon classes began the winner was left with piles of dirty dishes and a few left-overs.

But in the Harrison kitchen it was about the glory, the honour, and ten bucks.

I perused Pat’s recipe, made slight modifications and walked to Valu-Mart to buy enough ingredients to fill a 9 by 12 inch pan.

At the store it took me all of 30 seconds to discover that $10 wasn’t going to get me very far. Mozzarella was $5.69 for 600 grams and a pound of lean ground beef cost about $4. I decided it would be wiser to make two batches at once and try to beat the average sale price of $20 per pound.

A customer informed me I could save money by purchasing regular ground beef instead of lean. I resisted. A cashier said she had stopped making her own lasagna because she couldn’t match the price for 5 pounds of the PC brand. I pressed ahead.

***

Please tune in tomorrow for the exciting conclusion.

To those who line their budgie cage with my column (I admit, it fits perfectly!) - shame.

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