Thanksgiving is three weeks away, and plenty of us are already worrying about the turkey. If you’ve ever had a big dinner go sideways in front of company, Priscilla Presley knows exactly how you feel.
Back then, Priscilla was trying to fit in with Elvis and the guys who were always around him. She wanted to win them over. So she decided to cook.
And she didn’t pick something easy. She went with a home-cooked lasagna dinner, at home in Memphis (one account places it at Graceland).
Part of the pressure came from Joe Esposito. Joe was one of Elvis’s closest friends, an Italian American who’d known Elvis since his Army days in West Germany. He teased Priscilla that she couldn’t make lasagna as well as he could. That little jab made her nervous, and you can understand why. Cooking Italian food for an Italian guy who’s already doubting you is a tough room.
Joe passed away in 2016, and hearing him talk about Elvis gives you a feel for the crowd Priscilla was cooking for.
Joe Esposito talks about his old friend Elvis
Priscilla wasn’t taking any chances. She phoned her mother for help with the recipe.
Then came the big night. In her memoir “Elvis and Me,” as quoted by Showbiz Cheat Sheet, she remembered sitting down with everyone: “I sat down, smiled anxiously, and said, ‘Please start,'”
They did. And something was off right away.
“There was a look of shock on everyone’s face,” she wrote.
The pasta was hard. At first she figured her knife must be dull. It wasn’t the knife.
“I looked at my plate and was mortified when I realized I had forgotten to boil the pasta.”
She’d put the whole lasagna together with dry noodles.
Now, a table full of Elvis’s buddies could have made that night a lot worse for her. Elvis started it off by laughing. But then he looked over and saw her face.
“Elvis began laughing, but when he saw I was about to cry he turned to his plate and began eating,” she wrote. He ate it “uncooked noodles and all,” and everyone at the table followed his lead.
Joe got his fun out of it later, of course. For years afterward he teased her with one line: “Cilla? How about some lasagna?”
The story has a sweet little kicker, too. Years later, on September 16, 2013, a fan on Twitter asked Priscilla, “Have you perfected your lasagna?”
Her answer: “Very funny. Thanks for reminding me! I haven’t made lasagna since. :)”
So if your Thanksgiving gravy comes out lumpy this year, go easy on yourself. Priscilla’s dinner went a lot worse than that, and Elvis still dug right in, hard noodles and all, so she wouldn’t feel alone at that table.