Weekend Plans Post: The Perfect Pizza
When I go out to eat, the meal I usually get is a solid ‘B’. The only places where ‘C’ food would be acceptable are places where it is ultra-cheap and the way to deal with that is to not think about it. “Yes, this is an Egg, Cheese, and Meat sandwich from a fast food place that advertises on the radio. It’s not about them being good. It’s about getting two of them for four bucks in less than two minutes on the way to work.”
But when you say “hey, I have an hour to myself, I don’t wish to cook… I will go out and enjoy a meal”, where are you most likely to go? When you go there, what are you most likely to get?
Is it usually the same place (or, I suppose, one of two places) and is it usually the same thing (or, I suppose, one of two things)?
Well, for me, it is. And the places I go usually have good, solid, ‘B’ meals available for around $10 a plate (drinks extra). And, let’s face it, for $10, a ‘B’ is pretty good. You know you’re going to be getting a pretty good Reuben or a pretty good Flatbread Pizza and you’re going to have a pleasant interaction with the waitstaff and go home feeling like “yeah, that was better than cooking”.
Sure, sometimes they mess stuff up just a little bit and the bread is soggy or the batch of homemade chips are from the corner of the tray that wasn’t salted and you go home thinking “maybe that was a B- this time” but, sometimes, everything fires on all cylinders and you get The Perfect Pizza.
Now, I usually get The Meaty Flatbread Pizza and it’s pretty good. Then, one day, I noticed that some of the other dishes had jalapenos in them. So I asked for jalapenos on my pizza. Then, one day (about six months ago), they had an extra-spicy batch of jalapenos in the kitchen and I finished my pizza with tears streaming down my face.
And I have spent the last half a year chasing that pizza. They haven’t had particularly spicy jalapenos or the wrong person made them or they assumed that I would not want the seeds still in the pepper or something…
But, last night, they successfully recreated the pizza. It took three pitchers of water to finish it. And I will be thinking about that pizza for the rest of the year.
As for this weekend? That pizza will help get me through it.
So… what’s on your docket?
(Featured image is the sandwich, the salad, and the flatbread pizza from Ute and Yeti being taken from off of their menu page.)
My town is small, so unless I want to drive a far distance, I don’t have a *lot* of choices. Most commonly I’ll get a pizza from Roma’s (the mom-and-pop Italian place, like every town should have). It’s closer to New York Style than any other style, and it’s far better than the other pizza choices in town.
Or I’ll go to the good barbecue place and get a “meat and two” – they have a very diverse list of sides including some unusual things (deep fried green beans) and their food is good.
No real plans this weekend. It’s super hot here, though less super hot than it was earlier in the week. I’m playing with the idea of driving up to a town a bit north of here, that I’ve never been to, that supposedly has a “historic” mercantile store (aka tourist trap, probably, but still – it’ll only take me a half hour to get there and it could be fun)
I have already run errands, done stuff like gas up the car and get groceries and all that. Might go in and work a bit tomorrow; right now the research is working with soil which sets off my allergies and I may only be able to work on it every other day. (I am full aware of the irony that I am allergic to virtually everything I research)Report
When I have an hour to myself and a mealtime approaching, I don’t really find myself not wishing to cook. I really really like to cook. If I have two hours to myself, I’ll just cook something even fancier. If I’m eating out it’s generally because I don’t have time to go home, cook, eat, go back out and get to the thing that’s in the opposite direction from where I am now. So I’ll stop somewhere between here and there.
I had a chat a while ago with a friend of mine who was pursuing the perfect pizza. He is someone who, when he sets out in pursuit of a goal, gets serious about it. He got a laser thermometer so he could accurately determine the temperature of the exact bit of kitchen counter where the dough was rising so he could properly calibrate the rest time according to the pizza dough rest time spreadsheet he used. He did not build a wood oven in the back yard, but he did go to some lengths to get his domestic oven to be able to deliver heat to the crust fast enough for the perfect slightly-charred-but-still-chewy consistency.
I have yet to land an invitation for pizza.
This is the second of our two consecutive weekends where we’re not going anywhere. Apparently we’re rebuilding the back steps because Mr T decided their state of decay had advanced sufficiently so he went out to the hardware store and got materials for a new set of stairs. Then he dismantled the back stairs, so you just have to jump straight off the back deck, and that was as much time as he had that evening and now he’s at work. This is so absolutely a classic Mr T move, you can’t even imagine.Report
I am not a big food person, as I have mentioned many times here, and will go to wherever the cheap to fast ratio works out best if left to my own devices. BUT! My wife is a food obsessive. Indeed, all her hobbies revolve around food; gardening, pickling, experimenting with the food, butchering classes, etc. So, I have eaten my fair share of “good” food. So, we are lucky for my wife that we have very good, experimental pizza places. Now, I feel that they are far too Californian to be really good pizza, but it does give us a great variety.
So, this weekend will be the farmers market, followed by cooking and reading.Report
I like my pizza to have a thick, chewy (but crispy on the bottom) crust, with lots of cheese and sauce. Deep dish. I feel like I would really enjoy Chicago style.
This weekend I am having a yardsale. I found out that my town not only requires a permit, but restricts the sale to a “garage or carport, or back yard. No items may be in the front or side yard.” To which I say, damn the man and f*** the police. There’s a hoarder house down the block with an entire front yard overflowing with junk and they do nothing about it, so I’ll fight this fight.
Then I’ll spend the rest of the weekend doing laundry and packing because we leave for the beach on Tuesday. I don’t think even the fact that my mother-in-law is coming too will ruin my excitement.Report
1. FIGHT THE POWAH! I feel that way now after getting written up several years ago for “brush in alleyway” (which I later found out I didn’t technically own) and that I’d be fined if it weren’t cut and removed. On the hottest week of the year. So I hired a guy to the tune of $300. Then found out I didn’t actually own that property so I’m not sure how my city thinks it’s my responsibility. (This was a year when we had a couple of abominable busybodies in city management and LOTS of people got harassed. There have been a lot of firings – embezzlement and the like – and it’s backed off a lot)
One thing that frustrates me about some of this city business is that it seems the enforcement/harassment is very spotty or very selective. So,like, there’s the dude with five cars up on blocks in his yard and that’s just fine; let some family have the primary lawnmower be in the hospital for three weeks and they get a “nastygram” because their grass is taller than 5″….
2. Deep dish pizza and pan pizza are slightly different things. I’m not sure I could handle a true Chicago style pizza because it’s VERY heavy and very thick. But I like the Sicilian style deep-dish, but I also admit I like the thinner/flexicrust New York style. I don’t care nearly as much for the cracker-crust style (sometimes called St. Louis style) where the crust is hard and crisp instead of bready.Report
Yeah, down with thin and crispy crackery crust! But I will not turn down floppy pizza or regular crust. But I love a thick pillowy crust- like Little Caesar’s deep dish.Report
Let’s face it, even mediocre pizza is pretty good. I’m lucky to live in Chicago, where I’ll never have to settle.Report
Thick, chewy, and crispy on the bottom sounds like Detroit style pizza. There’s a local Detroit pizza place (Jet’s pizza) nearby, but I’ve never tried it.
There’s “Lefty’s Place” in Morgantown, but I don’t know how far that is from you.Report
I’ve heard of Jet’s pizza, but I don’t know if it’s a chain and it’s what you’re referring to, if it’s a chain and it’s not what you’re referring to, or something local to Big City (which isn’t Detroit). I’ve never tried it, but I’m not against the idea of trying pizza. Except the “cauliflower crust” stuff they sell at my grocery store.
I don’t know what Detroit style pizza is like, but Big City has a huge variety of pizza, the pizza it’s known for and the a bunch of other kinds. I complain a lot about living in Big City, but the food choices are amazing.Report
Jet’s is a chain with 380 locations in 20 states, mostly east of the Mississippi, but none are in West Virginia.
Oooo… Wiki/List_of_pizza_varieties_by_country
That should be good for killing a bit of time. 🙂Report
We have a LOT of pizza choices in Louisville but Jets is probably our favorite of the takeout chain variety. Really, really goodReport
Darn. That endorsement makes me regret throwing away the Jets coupons I got in the mail this week.Report
The new docs want to try to fix — or at least help — my wife’s irritable bowel. First test they want to do is no dairy for ten days. As I’m the dinner cook, I’m going through the recipes for things she likes to see if I can do dairy-free versions. Pizza’s probably a challenge.Report
I know people who are helped by something called the FODMAP diet but it’s a right bitch to be on if you don’t have to, because it’s quite restrictive.
A few years ago when I developed mystery hives I did a few rounds of elimination diet and it was not fun. I could not find anything (other than possibly things in the Anicardiaceae – cashews and pistachios and mangos) that made the hives worse, so I gave up.Report
Hmmm… My wife would probably rather die. Given some time to get used to it, and assuming I never went out to eat to recall that there were other things, I could get by on my uncle the Vietnam-era Green Beret’s “Charlie field rations” which he ate for weeks on end. Twice a day, rice, available vegetables or tubers, meat*, and some sort of sauce.
* Uncle Buck said that rat was almost always available. I never could decide if he was kidding or not.Report
I ran into a couple of teaches who were in a super fancy RV. The wife explained that her husband is on a very restrictive diet and that it’s easier just to cook what he can eat rather than scouring restaurant menus and eliminating what he can’t. So the high-end RV works better for them than hotels would.Report
“But when you say “hey, I have an hour to myself, I don’t wish to cook… I will go out and enjoy a meal”, where are you most likely to go? When you go there, what are you most likely to get?”
I usually choose a fast foodish place…..which leads me to comment on your grading scale. I actually prefer (as a general rule) the food you seem to be labeling as “C” food. For me, it’s much more about the quantity than some sort of foodie-ish quality. So I’ll (I’m ashamed to admit) eat the two burgers and fries (or maybe a burger and chicken sandwich and fries) that probably rank only a C and be very satisfied. (For what it’s worth, I can’t do that much anymore because of health reasons. But man, it’s good.)
My perfect pizza is usually some kind of frozen. For me it’s the convenience of staying and “cooking” something at my own pace (where “cooking” means putting something in the oven for 16 minutes and then taking it out) and not having to wait for the pizza delivery person and then face the social anxiety of opening the door to talk to them (or without having to go out and order something).
That sounds pathetic, and it is. But that’s what I really like when, for example, my spouse is out with some of her friends.Report
I tee off in about an hour for my second disc golf tournament of the year. This is a big one, with lots of touring pros (I am playing in the amateur division). Heat index is supposed to be 110. Both excited and terrified…Report
My weekend also involves pizza but probably not quite that memorable. There’s a hole in the wall place by my new house that has really good pizza. Bonus that it’s attached to a sketchy tavern with a little shrine to Darrell Green in it.
No tavern for me this weekend though since it’s just me and a very small human while my wife gets a well earned break. I picked a pizza up last night on the way home and me and the critter will have the leftovers for lunch. It’s usually even better round 2.Report
I prefer to eat out at places with food that I can’t make or is hard or takes a long time to make–like Sushi or Indian. Hey, I can make sushi but it’d take hours to make 5 kinds of nigiri.Report
Annual baseball trip with my son this weekend. We’re seeing the Rubber Ducks, Captains, and Tincaps. The best part was meeting a good friend for lunch. If you have some free time in Cleveland, Noble Beast Brewing has some good beer and surprisingly good food.Report