Happy New Year, lasagne and Amish quilts.

This time of year I feel that I should be writing about my New Years resolutions and my plans for the year to come, but instead I feel drawn to tell you about a brilliant idea for an invention that I've come up with.

 

As some of you will know, I have just come back from a holiday in Devon and Dorset. I stayed with my sister in Dorset then a holiday cottage in Devon, where my sister and family joined us for a few days. We had a good time despite it being the wettest Christmas and New Year ever, even the ducks have been complaining about the weather.

 

I enjoy self catering holidays, somehow it never seems a chore cooking in someone elses kitchen, even if you don't always get quite as well equipped a kitchen as you would at home. Whilst in Devon we decided to make a lasagne, a popular dish in our family. We bought dried pasta sheets, cooked up the meat and cheese sauces and then went to assemble the dish. The only dish in the holiday cottage the  right size was an oval shape and as everyone knows lasagne sheets are not oval. We therefor had to break up the lasagne to try and fit them in, those of you that have tried this will know that this is not as easy a it sounds. First you lay whole pieces of pasta in the centre of the dish and then try to fill in the gaps. You eye up the size and shape of the sauce you are trying to cover then work out where exactly you need to break the pasta. Holding the lasagne sheets at a 48 degree angle to the work surface you apply enough pressure to snap the pasta into the right size and shape, et voila you neatly fill the dish.

At least this is what should happen. In reality, despite your careful preparation, when you break the pasta it's as if you have applied the same pressure as a nuclear bomb and shards of lasagne go ricocheting around the kitchen. Bearing in mind the 10 second rule, you quickly collect up the pieces of pasta, invariably banging your head on unfamiliar cupboard doors as you go. A collection of slightly fluffy pasta pieces in hand you go back to your dish only to find that you still don't have the right shape piece to fit. More pasta explosions follow, along with more foraging forays to pick up the scattered pieces, more banged heads until eventually you complete the layers. The lasagne dish which has taken more patchwork skill to make than an Amish quilt, more pieces than a crazy paved path and results in you having a mild concussion.

And my invention? Easy snap pasta sheets. It's so obvious I wonder why it hasn't been thought of before. I think the world wold be a better place if there were lasagne sheets with little perforations on, a bit like the old sheets of postage stamps, so that they could be snapped cleanly and easily.

Right I've got to go, I need to write my acceptance speech for when I get nominated for a Nobel prize for either services to humanity or maybe science, I don't mind which. Happy New Year everyone.