‘Lasagna Love’ Delivers Food to People in Need of Comfort
A home cooked meal is a labor of love. Especially if it’s filled with homemade meat sauce, ricotta cheese, and grated yellow squash and zucchini.
“Lasagna’s just that classic comfort food. I feel everybody has their own recipe and it’s probably a recipe passed down generation to generations. It’s personal,” said Felicia Casper of Eden Prairie.
Free Home-Cooked Meals
Casper spends time making batches of lasagna every week to deliver to those in need during the pandemic. That includes people in the northwest suburbs.
“I was feeling helpless and wanted to help communities and families that were worse off than I was at that time,” said Casper.
But Casper is only one in 3,000 active volunteers nationwide cooking up lasagna and meals for strangers.
Since April, volunteers have delivered more than 6,000 meals to people. Currently, 1,000 meals are being delivered across the country each week.
Volunteer Felicia Casper prepares pans of lasagna to deliver.
The Start of Lasagna Love
Rhiannon Menn lives in San Diego and started the lasagna phenomenon that she calls “Lasagna Love.”
“Lasagna Love was started kind of by accident in the beginning of the pandemic, so back in April. In the beginning it was honestly just a way for me to feel more helpful,” said Menn.
What started as a few meals to help neighbors, suddenly became a nationwide movement and nonprofit organization in six short months.
Menn said those requesting a meal don’t have to be struggling financially.
“You can just be an overwhelmed parent,” she explained. “We’ve had people sign up who have lost a family member from COVID and are just feeling like they don’t want to cook and don’t know where to go next.”
With more and more requests for meals, Menn said Lasagna Love needs all the help they can get.
“I know there’s a lot of need here and we would love to have more people in the community to make and deliver meals,” Menn said.
“Lasagna brings a sense of nostalgia, and comfort and safety. So if I can bring a little bit of that to families in need, that’s our whole purpose. That’s why we’re here,” Casper said.
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