S prinkle with

A microwave lasagne made me want to cry

Words

bastardised Italian delight. Having begun as an oddity of evenings where I was babysat, it eventually became something I looked forward to, until I took the time to look at the packaging myself during a fateful trip to the grocery store. The instructions, as I would later learn in my postbabysitter years, were pretty standardised regardless of the brand:

I was immediately overcome with a profound sense of forlornness. Amidst the procedural nature of a meal squeezed into a tray and sealed in plastic, the grocery stores’ willingness to confer but a modicum of choice onto the felt like a half-baked apology:

We tried to give you lasagne. Put cheese on it if you want.

1. Pre-heat oven to 190 degrees (180 fan-forced). Remove sleeve and pierce film.

2. Cover product with foil and place product on a baking tray.

3. Place baking tray in oven, directly onto middle rack and heat for 30 minutes.

4. Carefully remove foil and heat for a further 15 minutes until golden brown.

5. Carefully remove baking tray from the oven.

6. Allow to stand for 1 minute. Sprinkle with cheese, if desired. Serve.

So restrained, cold, robotic. With the exception of the final step: Sprinkle with cheese if desired. A twinkle of personhood amid a dark sky of impersonal phrasing. A lonely copywriter — presumably hunched over some sort of humming laptop of antiquity, punching cooking instructions in 12pt Courier font into a now-redundant word processor — eager to leave an impression. In evoking desire, the instructions cease to be deterministic.

This seemingly innocuous step now has vanished from the packaging of both Coles and Woolworths lasagnes. Perhaps the casualty of a rebrand at some point. Today, most of my lasagnes are single serve, and I always cook them in the microwave. Besides stirring in the odd hunk of brie thieved from the walk-in fridge at work, scarcely will I sprinkle them with cheese, but should I desire to one day, I know it’ll be ok.