You're better off using the qr operator rather than evaling run-time code for this sort of thing (I'm surprised this wasn't mentioned in the ApacheCon talk):

my $re = qr/\Q$find/i; my @lines = grep /$re/, @$data_ref; [download]

   MeowChow                                   
               s aamecha.s a..a\u$&owag.print