Villa Italian Kitchen, an Italian restaurant chain based in New Jersey, recently announced it is launching a Gender Reveal Lasagna Catering Package that includes “a cheese lasagna with a pink or blue interior, garlic rolls and salad.” As far as celebrations that conflate sex and gender go, this cheese-based version seems relatively harmless, because (so far) it has not resulted in an explosion, a fight outside an Applebee’s, or a 47,000-acre wildfire. But couldn’t lasagnas — those perfect, delicious, gooey casseroles — reveal something more interesting than anatomy? Below, some suggestions:
• Where is Jimmy Hoffa? (A sausage lasagna, and somewhere inside there’s a little plastic King Cake baby with the coordinates of an unmarked grave.)
• Have extraterrestrials visited Earth? (Either a regular roasted eggplant lasagna, or a roasted eggplant lasagna that’s neon inside and emits a faint, tinny hum.)
• Why did that guy Mark ghost me? (A spinach lasagna, but instead of spinach it’s a tape recording of either the time I got high and locked myself in his bathroom for two hours, or the time I asked him if we could turn on Frasier during sex.)
• Is the Trump pee tape real? (A lasagna filled with either ground beef or pee.)
• Am I doing enough for my skin? (A roasted butternut squash lasagna filled with either all of my lotions, or other, better lotions that I have to identify by taste.)
• Did my co-workers all notice that I had a piece of spinach in my teeth for like an hour today, or was it fine and I’m totally overthinking it? (Brussels sprout lasagna, and the Brussels sprouts spell out “THEY NOTICED.”)
• Should I get bangs? (A skillet lasagna that maybe has little fringes of cheese hanging off the edge, or not.)
• Is the Loch Ness Monster real? (An artichoke lasagna with either chicken, or something that kind of seems like chicken but has a tougher texture, and tastes a little bit like rocks.)
• Am I actually accomplishing anything life, or am I just taking up space and leeching our planet of its dwindling resources? (Mini lasagna cups that are either mouth-wateringly delicious, or soul-crushingly stale.)
• Who will win the 2020 presidential election? (A spinach and mushroom lasagna, and hidden somewhere in the layers there’s either a cute little campaign button, or a portal to hell.)