I caught up with a high school friend yesterday, and while our conversation was pretty wide-ranging, I've since found myself contemplating at length the concept of a dealbreaker.
We touched on it only fleetingly yesterday, and while I could certainly think of things that would be dealbreakers for me, I'd never really come up against one in anything other than my imagination.
Last night I did -- and it wasn't anything from the little list I'd made up in my head. Not even related to anything from the little list in my head.
Would you believe this? Cheese.
Sad but true -- I cannot love the lactose intolerant.
This all comes up because last night I had dinner with a guy I've known for awhile, at my place, and we made pizza. Homemade pizza is one of my favourite things in the world; in fact, homemade anything is one of my favourite things in the world, and I really enjoy the process of making things from scratch -- I'm old-fashioned like that.
Homemade pizza, though, is particularly good, and it's particularly good for two reasons. Firstly, making pizza at home seems to be the only way to get a perfect crunchy base. And secondly, when you make pizza at home you can put whatever you like on it -- which, when I'm given free rein, tends to mean mushrooms, mountains of pepperoni (I'm not kidding at all when I tell people I can't be a vegetarian because I can't commit to a life without pepperoni pizza), and three or four different kinds of cheese. While I probably like the pepperoni better than the cheese, it's a close-run thing. The best restaurant pizza I ever had contained tomato sauce and five different kinds of cheese, and nothing else. It was incredible.
Anyhow, Mr. Man that I had dinner with last night, he doesn't eat cheese, and so we made pizza without it. It sort of pained me to put the pizza in the oven without that final layer of cheese. While I've come up against cheeseless pizza in the past (my mum once went on a zero-fat kick, and offered up cheeseless pizza as a dubious 'treat', and I went out a few times, a couple of years ago, with a vegan girl who made incredible pizzas -- she easily sold me on vegan meals, but nothing could induce me to drink my tea black in the mornings, and that was the end of that), this was the first time I'd made it -- and it was actually very good. While I think that those pepperoni-and-cheese extravaganzas will always occupy pride of place in my heart, I certainly wouldn't be averse to having cheeseless pizza in the future.
What? Didn't I say that cheese was a dealbreaker? That doesn't sound like a dealbreaker to you?
Yeah, alright, it's not. But this is -- I love cold pizza. Maybe even more than hot pizza. And cold pizza without cheese? Is a fucking disaster. It's quite, quite disgusting and awful. It is a hideous travesty of all that is good and right in the world, and doesn't even bear thinking about, much less trying again.
And just as I cannot commit to a life without pepperoni, I cannot commit to a life in which leftover pizza is rendered inedible by a lack of cheese.
It's probably just as well that Mr. Man had left by the time I tried to eat the leftover pizza for my lunch, since I had a small and absurd temper tantrum over the unfortunate state of what should have been a delicious lunch, and said a number of rash and inflammatory things -- although, all things considered, he may well have gotten a kick out of being around to be the subject of my frustration.
Now, it only remains to think of a suitable and creative use for cold, inedible pizza ...
We touched on it only fleetingly yesterday, and while I could certainly think of things that would be dealbreakers for me, I'd never really come up against one in anything other than my imagination.
Last night I did -- and it wasn't anything from the little list I'd made up in my head. Not even related to anything from the little list in my head.
Would you believe this? Cheese.
Sad but true -- I cannot love the lactose intolerant.
This all comes up because last night I had dinner with a guy I've known for awhile, at my place, and we made pizza. Homemade pizza is one of my favourite things in the world; in fact, homemade anything is one of my favourite things in the world, and I really enjoy the process of making things from scratch -- I'm old-fashioned like that.
Homemade pizza, though, is particularly good, and it's particularly good for two reasons. Firstly, making pizza at home seems to be the only way to get a perfect crunchy base. And secondly, when you make pizza at home you can put whatever you like on it -- which, when I'm given free rein, tends to mean mushrooms, mountains of pepperoni (I'm not kidding at all when I tell people I can't be a vegetarian because I can't commit to a life without pepperoni pizza), and three or four different kinds of cheese. While I probably like the pepperoni better than the cheese, it's a close-run thing. The best restaurant pizza I ever had contained tomato sauce and five different kinds of cheese, and nothing else. It was incredible.
Anyhow, Mr. Man that I had dinner with last night, he doesn't eat cheese, and so we made pizza without it. It sort of pained me to put the pizza in the oven without that final layer of cheese. While I've come up against cheeseless pizza in the past (my mum once went on a zero-fat kick, and offered up cheeseless pizza as a dubious 'treat', and I went out a few times, a couple of years ago, with a vegan girl who made incredible pizzas -- she easily sold me on vegan meals, but nothing could induce me to drink my tea black in the mornings, and that was the end of that), this was the first time I'd made it -- and it was actually very good. While I think that those pepperoni-and-cheese extravaganzas will always occupy pride of place in my heart, I certainly wouldn't be averse to having cheeseless pizza in the future.
What? Didn't I say that cheese was a dealbreaker? That doesn't sound like a dealbreaker to you?
Yeah, alright, it's not. But this is -- I love cold pizza. Maybe even more than hot pizza. And cold pizza without cheese? Is a fucking disaster. It's quite, quite disgusting and awful. It is a hideous travesty of all that is good and right in the world, and doesn't even bear thinking about, much less trying again.
And just as I cannot commit to a life without pepperoni, I cannot commit to a life in which leftover pizza is rendered inedible by a lack of cheese.
It's probably just as well that Mr. Man had left by the time I tried to eat the leftover pizza for my lunch, since I had a small and absurd temper tantrum over the unfortunate state of what should have been a delicious lunch, and said a number of rash and inflammatory things -- although, all things considered, he may well have gotten a kick out of being around to be the subject of my frustration.
Now, it only remains to think of a suitable and creative use for cold, inedible pizza ...
posted by beck at 9:45 pm
1 Comments:
Yes, making Christmas puddings is in my near future. Six hours of boiling -- cinnamon-scented steam everywhere, which smells delicious but still, not really the thing for an Australian summer, is it? My dad's mum once made Christmas puddings in the microwave. It was ... interesting. And definitely served to make that six hours of boiling look more attractive.
I think you can get soy cheese, but I don't know that I want anything to do with it. I had soy milk in my tea once, and once only, and swore off dairy alternatives for life. Although it looks a little like I may have to come to some kind of peace with it all ...
And yes, that's what I eventually came up with. I couldn't bring myself to throw out the pizza, foul though it was, and at about 2am this morning, I suddenly realised that I could add cheese and microwave it at work. Which is what I did (mozzarella and parmesan), and it was delicious. Sometimes the obvious solutions are the hardest ones to come up with.
Are you done with uni? How's it feel?
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