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Just Make the Lasagna
In High School, my best friend and I knew that in order to increase the likelihood that girls would want to go out with us we needed to do two things: learn to cook and watch all the Anne of Green Gables movies which were hugely popular when I was in my dating years.¹
It was in a Tenth Grade foods class that we learned to bake lasagna from scratch, including making our own noodles. We worked on mastering the recipe as it was often tricky to avoid making noodles that were either too hard or too rubbery.
But, it wasn’t until just after we graduated from High School that we got to try that recipe out on a few young ladies who agreed to enjoy an evening with a home-cooked meal, some games, and Disney’s Hercules.
Of course, I couldn’t have known at the time that the lovely young lady I invited on that date would someday be my wife. I am certain, however, that my ability to cook was one of the things that won her parents over when she was still on the fence about me.
Back then, I rarely hesitated in making a decision about something. I was either going to do it or I wasn’t. When several of my friends decided to go cliff jumping at a lake not too far from home, it was easy for me to recuse myself. I didn’t care that they called me “chicken” for not wanting to do it. My fear of heights at the time made it an easy decision.
