Molly and Me

Last night Nathan and I spent a good two hours assembling four trays of our favorite lasagna. We like this particular lasagna because it calls for lots of garlic, which we both love and often add more of, and is pretty reasonable cost-wise to make. We bought the prosciutto and pasta sauce at Costco, and if you hit the grocery stores at the right time you can usually find the rest of the ingredients on sale.

We froze three trays and baked one last night to have this evening for dinner so we wouldn’t have to wait 45 minutes for it to cook. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but in hindsight I realize we should have just cooked the damn thing tonight.

Nathan set the lasagna on the counter after it baked and then transferred it to chair out on our snow-covered back deck when we went to bed. There was no room for it in the fridge and he figured the cold Michigan air would keep the salmonella at bay until we heated the meal up again tomorrow. But wouldn’t you know I had no idea the lasagna was out there when I let Molly out to do her business this morning.

I am usually the first one up in the morning so I let the dog out before I take my shower. Any other day I no sooner have my hair lathered and the dog starts barking to be let in. And it’s not just one bark. She barks over and over so that we make sure to remember she’s out there with her hindquarters chilling in the snow. This morning there were no barks and I should have realized something was up. Yes, something was up indeed.

As I approached the slider leading out onto our deck, I could see Molly was not in her usual spot staring expectantly into our dark house. As I opened the door I saw that she was actually snout deep in garlicky Italian goodness.

I screamed Molly’s name. She turned to me with an “oh shit” look on her face and immediately slunk past me towards the stairs. Nathan and Autumn appeared and I retrieved the partially eaten pan from where Molly had pulled it from the chair. I flung it onto the counter and turned on the light to inspect the damage. The top two layers of at least one third of the dish were gone. There were spots that looked untouched but I new the entire thing was inedible.

Right now I have no idea if Molly actually did her business at all or if she immediately caught wind of the lasagna, thought, “hot damn, a delicious lasagna all for me” and dove in until I caught her. And that’s another thing. She most surely must have known she’d be caught, but there’s simply no mechanism in that food-obsessed brain of hers that’s able to tell her stealing the family’s dinner might be a BAD IDEA.

I hope she enjoyed the dish. It may very well be her last.