Pizza!

A Mathews Pizza -- there's that basil again!

 When I was little my mom used to pronounce pizza just like it's spelled with a short "i" and two "z"s.  It drove my brother Charles crazy.  We usually only had pizza on Sunday nights and it was the bad Totino's frozen kind which I'm pretty sure was the ONLY kind back in the seventies.  The pepperoni was cut into teeny-tiny little cubes and the crust could easily be confused with the box the pizza came in.  We loved it and thought it was delicious.  Usually, my brother Morgan and I ate our scrumptious frozen pizza in the dining room while watching The Wonderful World of Disney on a small black and white TV while my parents ate in the kitchen watching 60 minutes.  Back in those long ago days before Netflix or cable and any television reception came thanks to the wonders of the very large antenna on our roof, Sunday was the only night that we didn't all eat sitting together at the long kitchen bar with the nightly news on in the background.  Sunday nights were fun.

I still love pizza.  It's probably my desert island food but I am a little more particular about the pizza that I eat.  Well particular in that I like qualifying pizza as either "good" pizza or "bad" pizza.  I'll still eat "bad" pizza though if it's available.

I have a lot of favorite pizzas.  Pizzas are like friends.  I have lots of friends, they're all different and I love them all for different reasons.  If I had to choose a BPF (that's Best Pizza Forever is you couldn't figure it out), I'd probably pick Joe Bologna's.  We've been going to Joe B's my whole life -- decades before they moved to the old synagogue on Maxwell.  In fact, my brothers took me to Joe B's for pizza before I had my wisdom teeth taken out in 9th grade.  It was really sweet of them -- kind of a last supper. 

I also love Andolini's in Mt. Pleasant, SC.  I don't know that it's actually the pizza that I like so much there or if it's just how fun it is to go there without fail after the Cooper River Bridge Run every year to eat pizza and drink pitcher beer with abandon -- something I never do in my real life! 

Mary Rollins, of course, loves Goodfellas downtown.  It's part of her "urban artsy girl" style.  She and the ballet girls adore the whole idea of downtown life and pizza by the slice.  

I think Marc likes Miguel's in the Gorge the best.   Sometimes I question if he only likes to go hiking because hiking always includes lunch at Miguel's.  You can get anything on your Miguel's pizza.  Seriously, think of something, I bet they have it as a topping.

Lately, we've been having pizza at home more.  And no, not the Totino's frozen kind.  We've been making our own pizza.  I'll buy the Pillsbury refrigerated thin crust pizza dough and dress it up with whatever we've got on hand.  I rarely use a tomato sauce base (learned that at Miguel's) as typically I have leftover homemade Alfredo sauce, or ranch dressing, or pesto in on hand that I top with lots of veggies -- onions, fresh peppers, roasted peppers from the jar,  Kalmata olives, sundried tomatoes, a sprinkle of garlic and bacon or Italian sausage (I seem to always have Italian sausage links in my refrigerator, does everyone?).  fresh basil and now I throw on pine nuts, too, because what doesn't taste better with pine nuts?!  Will, who likes Little Caesar's Pizza (probably the only pizza I really dislike--bad, very bad) requires that one corner of the pizza be left veggie-free.  Actually, Will prefers his whole dinner plate to be veggie-free.  Then our masterpiece is topped off with lots and lots of CHEESE!  I hear we have a reputation for being a cheese loving people at the Mathews' house.

Maybe the best part of pizza (along with the cheese) is that I never seem to eat it alone.  It's such a celebratory food and food always seems to taste better when shared with someone else. 

What's your favorite pizza?