Hey! It’s been a few years.
I don’t feel like explaining right now, so instead, let’s talk about pizza.
After reading through Mike Monteiro’s mid-April email newsletter (which you should totally check out because it’s free and snarky and will likely make you think while also pissing you off at some point), I needed someone to talk with about pizza. And since everyone in my house (including both the cats) are currently asleep, I’m going to aim this one at you.
Pizza and I have a rather long history with a somewhat sad present. As someone with Celiac Disease, I am now extremely limited in my crust choices, which makes things a whole lot less fun. However, memory is still a thing and it’s amazing how vivid that can be when it comes to something amazing like… well… pizza.
My first love when it comes to that delightful combination of crust, sauce, cheese, and various accoutrements was Pizza Hut. Yeah, I know that it’s terribly corporate of me, but growing up in New Hampshire, it’s not like Chicago deep dish or New York thin crust was readily available. The Hut was there and they were handing out free personal pan pizzas for chubby little geeks like me who read enough books. It also happened to be the regular pick-up for my folks when they decided no one wanted to cook that night. I can still taste the buttery, fluffy pan crust and the chunks of sausage.
In high school, I fell in love with the cheese pies at Strafford House Of Pizza. They weren’t anything all that special, but it was still a decent crust and their large pie was six bucks. There was a pool of grease in the middle and we used to order it delivered to the back door of the school where the back stairs from the band room met up with a parking lot out of sight from the main office. I probably still have chunks of that cheese orbiting my heart right now and I have zero regrets.
But I’m missing something in between there, because in junior high school (that’s what we used to call it before this abomination of “middle school”) they had Lisa’s Pizza trucked in, warmed up, and served to all of us greasy piles of hormones. What makes this interesting is that Lisa’s Pizza originally came from Old Orchard Beach, Maine. A bit of a trip for pizza, and the town I’d eventually call home for nearly twenty years. Life is weird. The pizza wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t my favorite. The sauce tasted like the can it came in and the crust was too damned fluffy. On the plus side, it taught me how to deal with disappointment. So there was that.
Since having to swear off gluten, my favorite slice was from a pizzeria in Brooklyn, New York that actually had authentic NY-style pizza on a gluten free crust. It was heavenly and I ate as much as I could during my brief visit. Still dream about it if I’m being honest.
These days, my favorite pizza is a gluten free dough ball that I buy at the grocery store and roll out myself. It’s not the same, but I manage to spiff it up well enough that it’s passable.
That being said… nothing is better than that personal pan pizza I got after reading a bunch of Judy Blume books and wolfed down with too many sodas from a red plastic cup after a couple games of Pac Man in the waiting area.
