Spilly’s Monday Meal: Maryland and Rutgers to the Big Ten

Last week, we saw conference realignment show its ugly head once again, as Maryland and Rutgers decided to leave their respective conferences for the Big Ten. As everyone braces themselves for the next round of seeing who will avoid being stuck outside the cool kids club for the next five to ten years, let’s focus on the two schools that have jumped ship. Today’s dish will feature food from both Maryland and New Jersey. I’m making lasagna for you!

STEP 1: Lasagna is a pretty easy thing to make. It’s just layers of stuff on top of each other, and then you bake it. You could put anything in there at all! Some people may insist on things like sauce and cheese and noodles, but those people are close minded. They are afraid to tempt culinary fate like us. We will start by separating each layer with a tortilla! Let’s put one in our casserole/Saturday cereal bowl.

STEP 2: Now, when I did some research into New Jersey food, I confirmed something we all knew: What they make currently is already Spillyfood. I could sit here and say “DEEP FRY A HOTDOG AND BACON AND CHEESE AND WRAP IT” but it turns out they’ve already done that. I needed to think of something that even New Jersey hadn’t thought of before.

Wikipedia says that New Jersey is known for frozen foods. Sure. Why not? Wikipedia has never lied, ever. In addition, a sandwich at Rutgers called the “Fat Darrell” was once named the country’s best sandwich. What’s on it? Chicken fingers, mozzarella sticks, and french fries. It’s like I don’t even need to blend anything together. So let’s hit two birds with one stone, shall we?

FOODTIP: Always purchase foods that have happy faces carved into them. Surely there’s nothing nefarious going on there. It’s happy!

STEP 3: Next, the internet tells me that New Jersey is where Welch’s grape juice was founded. Well, that’s awful fancy, buying a whole jar of grape juice for a recipe. Why not stick to what we know?

A Kool Aid Burst is pretty much the same thing, right? It’s purple, so it must be true.

STEP 4: Nuke everything in a pile until soft, and then throw it all into the blender.

Don’t forget a bun for the sandwich! It wouldn’t be authentic without it!

STEP 5. Push all the buttons until you’ve got a thick, viscous grapeglop. Spoon it into your first layer of lasagna! Congratulations, New Jersey, here is the culinary representation of you:

STEP 6: Put another tortilla on top of New Jersey. Now, let’s move on to Maryland. Maryland’s food is much easier to come up with. It’s obviously going to be crabcakes. Crabcakes are also easy to make, right? They’re basically little yuppie hamburgers!

STEP 7: Find some crab. In a bag. Not a live one. Goodness. That would take far too long for us to deal with than opening a bag.

Imitation crab? Eh. Good enough.

STEP 8: Next up is seasoning! Toss some Old Bay and Breadcrumbs into a bowl with the crab nuggets.

STEP 9: This...this isn’t really sticking together like it should. We just have breaded popcorn crab. We need...something....something sticky to congeal it all together. Think...think......

STEP 10: PERFECT! Let’s just squeeze in as much as we can into the crab chunks!

STEP 11: Stir vigorously until all crabmeat is coated in chocolate breading. Then, hand form into large Crab Pucks. Dump the pucks into a pan of oil to cook!

STEP 12: Put the crab pucks into your Big Ten Lasagna Maryland layer.

STEP 13: Hmmm. we’ll need some filler in those holes to the left and right, to keep it even. Let’s see what we have in our pantry.

Hey, that’s almost like a thing that actually goes in lasagna! Bonus points for us.

Once added, the ravioli, crabcakes and Tangballs will make a rough image of the Maryland state flag. Kinda. If you squint.

STEP 14: Put on your last tortilla layer and draw a happy face on it with Internet Paste. This will calm anyone who eats it by convincing them that the lasagna is edible. Bake this in a kiln for time.

STEP 15: Once you dig in, your lasagna should look like this:

SO DELICIOUS! ENJOY!