How can you NOT love Pizza??

OMG! My husband I & just returned from a pizza date. I remarked to someone today that I was going out for pizza and they said they aren't real pizza fans. I truly present a face of understanding when people are totally out of my realm of comprehension, but how can you NOT love pizza? I mean, dude....pizza. Then they said, well....when I feel the need for pizza we send out for xxx....a take and bake place. My stomach clenched with anxiety. Sigh...I mark my life around food, but I can describe the high points of my life with pizza.

How it started....my mom...sigh....DA MAMMA! Granted it was 40 years ago, but add to that my mom was Canadian....so my first memory of pizza was from the little Chef Boyardee box and hamburger. BUT oh Lord I recall that as being my favorite meal. My brother and I would watch mom mix the dough (biscuick I am sure), press it to the pan, slurp out the sauce, add the hamburger, and sprinkle the CHEESE on (overly overly processed parmesan) then put it in the oven. I guarantee my mom created with the warning "the more you open the oven to look, the longer it takes to cook" because Rick and I would want that pie done SO quickly. It is so much the core of a happy memory that now as an adult (a fairly cogniscent cook if I must brag) I have on a few occasions, hesitated at the box of Chef Boyardee pizza (it still exists). I remember Rick and I in jammies with our slippers on thinking this was HEAVEN as we ate the pizza HOT.

My mom progresses in her culinary experiences. I recall my brother's 10th birthday where mom had a a passel full of boys & let them make their OWN pizzas. She was a GENIUS as she let US do the leg work. Now she had the sauce down...her own which took HOURS to blossom on the stove. Her dough was still bisquick but the toppings were abundent...peppers, hamburger (family of the 70's), onions, olives and grated mozzerella with the parmesan. The boys as well as the one interloper (me) were again cast into the sky, heaven.

We had a high school hang out. Giovannis. Oh Lord help me. I remember being young and asking for extra cheese, and they looked at me and shook their head. Bliss. Thank goodness we lived at home as Giovannis was a regular place to be seen and eat. As I returned home for a visit, my high school friend and I would have our catch up visits at Giovannis. It is still there and I still visit it as I pass through Portland.

When we could drive, we discovered Nona Emilias....sigh. It was outside where we would have prowled in High School. But working and Junior College made us more mobile. I recall the first time I took my husband there with my parents, sister and high school friend. We were happy. Great slabs of pizza with so much cheese that it made cows weep. When you would eat in the restaurant (yes, a restaurant) there was a strolling accordian player for ambiance. THIS was upscale. I recall when I was first in Utah, my brother taunted me that he was eating at Nona'. The next day I found a calzone in a Fed Ex box quasi fresh from beautiful downtown Hillsboro, Oregon. I have NEVER loved my brother as much as I did in that forkfull!

Let's talk college. Yah....Track Town pizza in Eugene, Oregon. I had SO many happy thoughts that when I had been out of college 10 years and was leaving the state, I drove 4 hours round trip to get the pie. Lord, it was worth it. Now let's take a minute and review the reality of college life. Broke, buzzed, and lazy...our cafeteria laden diets were punctuated with cheap pizza we picked up to avoid delivery fees and tips. Bless Track Town, they had weekly coupons left at the dorms as well as in the school and local papers. My roommate and I would secretly get a pizza, shut off the lights, and eat our prize in the dark to avoid the mooch of the floor. It was regular pizza, but was such a break from real life that it became a memory versus a meal.

Each place I have lived, there is a pizza place. I have become astute enough to believe if you want great pizza, hunt where the college students do. Seattle had Atlantic Street pizza which had a slanted floor 1/2 of a room take out place which was well worth sitting in line with smelly, stoned grunge heads to get. I felt URBAN!

I felt hopeless when I arrived in Utah. I mean REALLY....what do people in the west know about PIZZA...that requires Italians. I can't imagine many Italians converting to the LDS church. But, as I saw on PBS, an amazing little cache of Italians did land here to farm and set up the marketing system to support their eating habits. I digress. I bless the Summers brothers, Danny most especially who told us about The Pie (voices of angels). It is right on the University of Utah campus. It is a HOLE. People have signed their names for years on the bricks. Mike and I would celebrate West Wing night with the Pie and cheese pullaparts (dough with cheese in it...but definitely a must have for the lactose intollerant, ask my sister!). They have spread to the Burbs so those folks are happy. ME? I have them on speed dial (Da Pie) and when they enter my phone number into the system they say "Hello Heather". I weep silently.

Tonight we went to Mike's discovery. He was on the internet studying Napoleonase pizza (like you don't do that) and found there is one HERE. So we went. Just so you know, a maghreta pizza is dough, olive oil, chopped tomatoes, basil and fresh mozzerella. This is put in a stove oven. Let me say, I love the overfilled pizza of Giovannis, Nona's, Track Town, as well as Da Pie...but when you return to the beginning of food time....it is worth appreciating. My husband Mike is still prancing around congratulating himself for this find. My one complaint is that I want to ask for extra ham (Italian cooked ham) and more cheese. Mike was offended..."That is an AMERICAN habit...you do not do that in Napoli". On the inside, I growled...this is the damn US of friggin A buddy....give me my extra cheese!

Be good to you!
H
(go get yourself a slice this weekend!)