Thanks to Leftovers

Thanksgiving leftovers are in my opinion better than the real thing, especially since I started getting two Thanksgiving dinners every year, Jason's dad's on Thursday and Jason's mom's on Saturday. Now I can eat the best of each meal for however long they last. I just have a love for comfort food and we don't mind leftovers at all. It's one of our best similarities, we are not picky eaters. It was Jason's birthday today and I did promise him pizza, but when we looked at all the leftovers we couldn't resist eating that for dinner tonight. I promise lovey, I will get you pizza as soon as the leftovers run out.

Happy Birthday Jason!! I love you!

Birthday Joys

I stocked up on all my favorite snacks and drinks yesterday. I also got something we could eat for dinner and lunch the next couple of days so I don't have to cook. Reason being, tomorrow's my birthday and I don't want to have any stressful moments. Lauren's coming into town from NY and a few of us are going out to dinner. Then on Sunday we're meeting a bunch of friends at the Renaissance Fest to hang out and be merry all day. It should be a great birthday!

Here are a few of my favorite things (sing with me):
pistachios
popcorn
cheese and crackers
chicken salad
potato salad
grapes
olives
frozen pizza (I prefer this over pizza delivery, I'm aware that it's strange. :)
black cherry ice cream

As you read in Jason's blog, I also got ingredients for a yummy new drink creation and I picked up a couple 6-packs of our favorite beers.

It's Not Really a Pie

I suppose it's a pie because it's round, has "fillings" and a crust, but I don't really think of a pizza as a pie. The earth is round, has a crust, and is covered in toppings, but it's not a pizza.

But pizza is a wonderful thing regardless of its pie status. It's one of those foods which, as a basic template, is simple in execution but allows for a myriad of design changes. There's a huge range of crust flavors and textures, sauces of differing complexity levels, and many different cheese options, not to mention a world of possible toppings. That's why no one pizza made by a particular chain or restaurant or person ever tastes quite the same as any other pizza recipe.

The angel is in the details, I guess. And I love almost every riff on the concept. Oddly enough, the best pizza I ever ate I found in a small cafe in France. I think it may have been recommended to me by someone I met in my hotel outside of Paris, but I can't quite remember. I may also have stumbled on it by accident. In either case, the pizza was impeccable. Perfect sauce, perfect crust, fresh toppings, including red onion and artichoke, and the coup de grâc; an egg broken onto the pizza as it came out of the oven. Sounds strange, I know. But it was so good. The white of the egg cooked from the heat of the pizza. The yolk cooked some, but stayed mostly liquid, like a good sunny side up egg should. It was an unexpected addition that really elevated the pizza beyond anything I'd ever had.

And it's funny. I've considered breaking an egg over a pizza since then, and I can't seem to bring myself to do it. I feel like that was a once in a lifetime experience. One that could only work in that cafe in France at that point in my life. Any attempt to recreate that moment would feel, at best a pretender to the throne, and at worst a very bad pizza. I mean, imagine breaking an egg over a pizza from Papa Johns. Yeech! Doesn't sound appealing in the least bit.

And it would ruin my memory of that perfect pizza. I'd rather have the memory.

Bachelor Chow

Hey Steph. This is food entry number 22.

I'm glad to say that I've put the bachelor chow diet behind me. Kate and I are both becoming decent cooks, Kate even more so than I, and we generally eat pretty well.

However...

While Kate is gone this weekend I'm enjoying a culinary cruise down memory lane, sampling bits of the bachelor chow lifestyle as I go. And leaving all the unwashed plates on the living room table when I'm done.

So far I've had pasta with a can of Chunky Chicken and Corn Chowder dumped on top, a pizza with an accompanying Chicken and Bacon Calzone (it was free from Papa Johns as part of some promotion...I'm not that much of a pig), leftover Chinese food, and bullseye eggs every morning for breakfast. That last one isn't truly bachelor chow, but it qualifies because I'm using the only breakfast-type foods we have in the house to create a meal, and any meal created to save a trip to the grocery store counts as bachelor chow on some level.

For lunch today I'll be dining on cold pizza, leftover from yesterday, and soda. That will likely be my dinner, too. And actually soda is the beverage accompaniment for all my bachelor chow meals, sometimes in a mug, but generally right from the two liter bottle (the most recent of which is empty now, sitting on the floor next to the living room table.)

Am I classy this weekend? Probably not. Do I care? Definitely not. Will this all be cleaned up before Kate gets home? Most assuredly yes. If it weren't for this written confession, Kate would have no idea what a classless barbarian her man becomes when she goes out of town.

But sometimes you just have to get back to the basics. And sometimes your macaroni and cheese, garbanzo beans and tuna fish are just screaming to be combined together. This weekend they get their chance.