Attack of the Killer Lasagne

Thinking about my broken coffee press reminded me of the last time I broke one of my dishes, a few years ago. And it was a rather spectacular event too; not one I'd like to repeat. It all began one Sunday afternoon when I decided to make a pan of lasagne...

As I liked doing a couple times a year, I planned on making a big pan of lasagne. I would always use my large 9" x 13" Pyrex pan, which made enough lasagne to not only give me several meals that week, but also have allow me to put another 5 or 6 meals' worth in the freezer. It was, and still is, great to have something in the freezer to simply pull out and reheat on days I didn't feel like making anything else.

I'm not terribly good at multi-tasking while cooking so I started by making the mixture for the meat layer. I browned the ground beef, turned off the heat, added the sauce, then let it sit while I worked on the next parts. Typically, I would simply use hard noodles right now of the box. This time, however, I decided I would try the “boil the noodles first” thing as described on the box of lasagne noodles.

Of the two large burners on my stove, the front one had the skillet with the meat and sauce in it, so after filling it with water I put my big pot on the large burner in the rear left corner. I also got out my Pyrex pan and also set it on the unused front burner. That way it would be nice and close to both the boiled noodles and meat mixture. I added the right number of noodles to the pot and turned on the heat to commence boiling.

While that was going, I proceeded to prepare the mixture for the spinach / ricotta cheese layer. Since I sometimes have difficulty standing in one place and tend to wander around, I grabbed the bowl and wandered into the living room area in my apartment while I was stirring.

SMASH!!!

I was taken off guard by the sudden noise from the kitchen. I ran back to the kitchen to see what had to have been a thousand glass shards around the room. Where there used to be a large glass pan there now was a couple large pieces of glass and a red hot burner. I almost never use the back burners on my stove, so it seems that out of habit I accidentally turned on the front burner, instead. The front burner that had a large, empty glass pan sitting on it. There's a reason why Pyrex dishes carry warnings against using them on stove tops, and I learned that reason first hand.

Since my floor was now a jagged, pointy minefield, I promptly put on some shoes and grabbed my broom to clean up the mess. There was so much glass everywhere that it took a while, and several passes, to get it all. And it didn't end there. Not surprisingly, the meat and sauce mixture sitting on the adjacent burner had a glitter to it that wasn't there before. There was absolutely no way I would be using that now. It went directly into the garbage bag as well.

After cleaning up the kitchen I walked back to the living room, and I noticed shards of glass made it into there too. I was shocked to see several large pieces sitting further away from the kitchen than I had been standing when the dish exploded. My living room, dining room and kitchen are like one large open area with just one of those tall counters dividing the kitchen and dining room. Even so, for the glass to get where it did it would have had to fly up and over that counter as well as soaring at least 20 feet through the air.

Back when I lived at home, it often annoyed my parents that I would be wandering around the kitchen as I was drying dishes. They frequently would tell me to stand still. In this case, however, my inability to stay in one place was a very good thing. I often wonder what would have happened if I had been in the kitchen at the time, standing only a couple feet away when this happened. Perhaps my whole body would be like the face of the villain from the movie Die Another Day, who had a suitcase full of diamonds explode in his face.

Fortunately the ricotta and spinach I was mixing was fine. No glass made it into the bowl I had been carrying at the time. But since I had no other use for it and I had really been looking forward to some lasagne for dinner, I made a quick trip to the store to get some more ingredients to replace those I had to throw away. I didn't buy another pan, but I made do with some cake pans I had instead.

Although I did shortly after receive a new Pyrex pan as a gift, I don't think I've actually made any more lasagne since that incident. I've used it for cooking other things, just not lasagne. I've purchased frozen lasagnes though. My reasoning was that, especially since they were on sale, it actually ended up being cheaper (not to mention easier!) buying them over making my own.

But now I wonder, has this incident subconsciously turned me off of making my own lasagne? Nah, probably not. I'll just chock it up to laziness. I found it is a time consuming thing to make, after all. I've found other things I enjoy eating just as much that are far simpler to make. But maybe I'll go ahead and give it another go again soon. Just let me finish the last frozen one in my freezer first.