Furloughed retail worker uses stimulus check to make 1,200 pans of lasagna for town

After Michelle Brenner got furloughed from her retail job because of the coronavirus pandemic, she decided she wanted to do something nice for her Washington community.

Brenner, 45, had been grocery shopping for people in her neighborhood when she realized many were asking for the same thing: frozen lasagna, the Washington Post reported. Then, she had an idea. She posted it to her Gig Harbor community Facebook page not long after.

“Hello favorite friends — I delivered a ton of frozen family-size lasagnas today,” Brenner wrote, according to the Post. “Now, this is not a problem by any means, lol. But you have a die-hard, full Italian lasagna lover living in your town.”

She then offered to whip up some “fresh homemade, no calorie counting lasagna” to anyone who wanted some, the Post reported.

As requests came in, Brenner headed to the store, where she used her entire stimulus check to purchase ingredients, CNN reported. Using her grandmother’s recipe, she whipped up 130 pans before delivering them — all for free, according to the outlet.

“There was this sense of panic in my area and I felt it was my call of duty to help,” she told Today.

A week later, demand had skyrocketed and Brenner could barely keep up, according to the outlet. Over Easter weekend, she made 60 lasagnas in her home kitchen all by herself.

“The whole point of this is to spread that sense of community wherever we can through the comfort of lasagna,” Brenner told CNN. “So, I don’t want anybody to feel disincluded because reality is there are people out there who can’t afford a dollar.”

Since March, Brenner has made and given away more than 1,200 pans, Today reported.

And she’s gotten herself a new nickname — a local fan made her a shirt that said “Lasagna Lady.”

After a run in with the health department, Brenner moved her operation to a commercial kitchen at Gig Harbor Sportsman’s Club, where she cooks between eight and 14 hours a day, according to CNN.

“She decided to do what she could for the community instead of sit at home,” Le Rodenberg, the club’s president, told the Post. “I can tell you that she takes extra care with every one of those lasagnas.”

Lasagna recipients include first responders, older members of the community and people having trouble making ends meet, the Post reported.

“It’s everybody and anybody,” Brenner told Today. “Some people just don’t want to cook. Some are afraid to leave their house. One man came by who had just lost his father and his young son.”

Since news spread of Brenner’s free lasagnas, the community jumped in to help, raising $23,000 in the last nine weeks to help with expenses, CNN reported.

Despite cooking 90 days in a row, Brenner said it has never felt like work, Today reported.

“People say ‘are you tired’?” Brenner told CNN, “and I go, ‘you know, I don’t have time to think about that, I have lasagna to make’.”

While she expects to go back to her retail job sometime this summer, Brenner said she hopes to continue cooking for the community.

“I’ll bet I could continue this for the rest of my life,” she told the Post. “I love creating in the kitchen, but more importantly, I love the people I’ve met.

“Those warm smells help people to know that somebody cares about them. You can be in the most awful place in your life, and then a big plate of lasagna will provide some peace and hope.”

This story was originally published June 28, 2020 at 10:15 AM with the headline "Furloughed retail worker uses stimulus check to make 1,200 pans of lasagna for town."