By Mary Ellen Mitchell
Lasagna Love is an international nonprofit organization that arose from a simple idea in the spring of 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic. Rhiannon Menn, a San Diego resident, realized that some of her neighbors needed help with meal provisions during quarantine. She responded by delivering her homemade culinary creations, including lasagna, which quickly became everyone’s favorite comfort food.
Soon friends and neighbors began to join Menn in the kitchen, and the concept of neighbor helping neighbor through warm and bubbly layers of gooey goodwill grew exponentially in the years that followed.
Benevolent Bakers
Today Lasagna Love is a full-fledged nonprofit, with 80,000 volunteers across the globe — aptly called “chefs” — who feed families, spread kindness, and strengthen communities.
Chefs make each lasagna to order, using ingredients they procure and purchase with their own money. They can use the organization’s recipe, their own, or often one passed down through family for generations.
To ensure satisfaction, chefs text recipients to inquire about personal preferences or dietary restrictions before starting. While most recipients ask that their lasagna be delivered warm and fresh from the oven, some want it frozen, or sometimes — unbaked. Delivery time is also finalized by text.
As straightforward as this process seems, the idea of asking for help can feel uncomfortable for many, and some may not be able to greet their chef. So, to give recipients a choice in their preference for interaction, chefs text upon arrival, and if they’re asked to leave the lasagna at the door, it’s never been an issue.
Chefs have flexibility in their choices, too. They decide how often to bake, how many trays to bake per day, and how far they’re willing to drive to deliver. Lasagna Love trains chefs on topics such as food safety and handling through an online portal, where they also receive baking and delivery assignments from volunteers known as “Local Leaders.”
Delaware Delivers
Since the fall of 2020, when the first Delawarean volunteered, 500 Lasagna Love chefs have baked and delivered over 5,100 lasagnas in the First Sate, and they’re just warming up.
Anyone in need can request a lasagna through a simple form on the organization’s website, with no rationale required.
“There are a million reasons someone may request a lasagna, but we don’t ask why, and we don’t judge,” says Delaware’s local leader, Lea Cassarino, who is retired from her career as a public health program manager for the state of New York. While managing and coordinating with every Delaware chef, Cassarino is also a chef herself, which is how she started with the organization.
Lasagna recipients aren’t always at the bottom of the economic ladder. New Castle County resident and chef Jan Van Valkenburg says she has delivered to families living in run-down motels, but also to houses larger and subjectively nicer than her own.
“We just never know what people are going through,” she says. “Maybe they’re having mental health or personal issues, or they’re sick or recovering from surgery. It’s a privilege to help them, regardless.”
Cassarino sums up Lasagna Love’s mission: “To show neighbors that people care for them, nourishing not only the body, but just as importantly, the heart.”
— For more information, visit LasagnaLove.org
Above: Lasagna Love volunteer chef Sia Willie. Photo provided.