4Chan Punks The Today Show With #FakeNews About "Salad Lasagna" Recipe; Guy Says His Real Name is "Dick Chmellar" and He Invented the Recipe to Please His Wife's Boyfriend

I think this will bring up a large version of the emails back and forth.

I have to add an asterisk here: This all looks genuine enough, but sometimes they don't just prank the media. They prank the rest of us. Who knows, maybe the story of the punking is itself a punking. Maybe they're making all this backstory up.

That said:

Per 4chan, someone published a picture of a salad configured in a lasagna-like layered fashion, and "Julia" from the Today Show contacted them to get the details.

Here's what a hoaxer apparently wrote back:

Hi Julia,

I'd be happy to tell you the story. Since my username on here is a bit inappropriate for the casual viewer my real name is Dick Chmellar and I'm a watercraft engineer from Cardiff, UK.

Basally, the story behind this dish is because I wanted to impress my wife's boyfriend, Omar. I get questions about their relationship all the time so to clear things up... I unfortunately lost most of my genitals in an accent when myself and my team ere working on a prototype stealth dingy. Me and my wife didn't have children of our own so we mutually agreed that she could see other men to satisfy her needs as well as become pregnant.

Anyway, I digress. I was meeting Omar for the first time and I wanted to impress, my wife and him had been seeing each other for a couple of weeks and she said he was a decent guy. However, he was a vegan and had a strong case of OCD. In my slight panic (as I've never prepared a meal for a vegan with obsessive compulsive disorder) and using my engineers thinking, I came up with the idea of a salad served in an appealing geometric fashion.

Safe to say, Omar was very pleased with the thought behind the gesture and we all had a great evening!

...

Kind regards,

Dick Chmellar

Here's the story the Today Show published.

The carefully crafted dish, however, isn't some maniacal, pro-keto joke. Dick Chmeller, a watercraft engineer from Cardiff, U.K., told TODAY Food that he created the dish to impress his wife, Melanie Chmeller-Smith, and her new friend, Omar Pasha, whom he was meeting for the first time. As he was planning the meal, Chmeller "panicked" when he learned that Pasha follows a strictly vegan diet.

"I'd never prepared a meal for a vegan before," Chmeller told TODAY. "Using my engineers' thinking, I came up with the idea of a salad served in an appealing geometric fashion."

On Saturday night, dinner was served and, according to Chmeller, "Omar was very pleased with the thought behind the gesture."

LOL.

lol lol lol lol lol

But remember, we still could be all getting punked -- an enterprising hoaxer might have taken the names and quotes from the Today story and then created a fictitious backstory to "explain" them.

But I think it's real and obviously I hope it's real.

Guy Says His Real Name is "Dick Chmellar" and He Invented the Recipe to Please His Wife's Boyfriend&bodytext=I think this will bring up a large version of the emails back and forth. I have to add an asterisk here: This all looks genuine enough, but sometimes they don't just prank the media. They prank the rest of...&topic=world_news"> posted by Ace of Spades at 03:29 PM

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