She would call us in for dinner on those summer nights, and I remember smelling it before we even got into the garage, burnt noodles. My brother and I would give each other the "oh no" look and slowly make our way to the dinner table. .
Crunching our way through the hard noodles, we would swallow it down with our milk. My mother had never seen us drink as much milk as we did on those nights of her lasagna. She was astounded at how strong our bones were going to be, and for that reason which I never realized until I got older, I think she continued to make it more often. My father knew that it was her attempt at trying to be a good cook, and take care of her family, and for that he never told her how bad it really was. He just choked it down with his drink and would sneak us out for ice cream when she was doing the dishes. He would tell her that he wanted to take us to see the stars from the top of our neighborhood. My brother, and I would climb into the back of his truck and hold on tight while my dad drove us up the road to our local ice cream shop, Jimi Cone. He would tell us, "Tough noodles deserve a little ice cream in the belly to soften them up." Summer nights were tolerable for those tough noodles, although when winter came it got a little tough to swallow them down with no hope for a secret ice cream trip.
Lasagna: a type of Italian food that has layers of flat noodles baked with a sauce usually of tomatoes, cheese, and meat. Just the word seemed so unappealing to me through the many nights my mother forced us to eat it. My grandmother would make wonderful Italian dinners, and I loved every one of them. Her homemade stuffed shells were my favorite, but when she made lasagna I declined. I couldn't get over my childhood dinner nightmares of eating hard noodles. She would laugh at me and tell me that it was the exact same ingredients as the stuffed shells, just in a different form, and I still never gave it a try.