Toothpaste Never Pairs Well With Lasagna
Today is a federal holiday in the United Sates: it is Labor Day, a celebration of and rest from labor. It marks the end of the summer, institutes a fashion law that prohibits wearing white henceforth, and serves as an opportunity to over consume fatty meals.
Eating, I l love it. And so that’s how I’m choosing to celebrate the victory of the late 19th century labor movements that insisted on the holiday.
After all, I work for food, so why not make food work for me?
And there's one food I'm particularly interested in this Labor Day: lasagna.
But not any lasagna will do. Nope. I'm intrigued by the most puzzling lasagna of them all: the Colgate lasagna.
In 2017 the internet was in uproar over a frozen beef lasagna supposedly manufactured by the famed toothpaste company in 1982, the same year that gave us the compact disc and E.T. Unlike the CD and our extraterrestrial friend, though, there's no direct evidence that the Colgate lasagna existed.
All the buzz was the result of the grand opening of the Museum of Failure in Sweden. The museum featured a mocked-out box of the alleged lasagna and the internet, in its characteristic unscrupulousness, ran wild with it.
Colgate was not amused.
In order to quell the digital firestorm, the company eventually wrote to the museum, stating that it "has no recollection of a Colgate Lasagna."
In truth, the lasagna most likely never existed. From what we can tell, the hullabaloo might have derived from a 1966 magazine (pg. 72) mentioning Colgate’s short lived research into chicken and crabmeat entrees.
But who knows by what long lived game of telephone that the brief mention of those entrees morphed into a frozen beef lasagna by 2017.
So, taking a cue from Colgate’s corporate amnesia, let’s forget about our questionable labor for today and enjoy a day off by pigging out.
Happy Labor Day!