Redemption through Pizza.

After last night's dinner debacle (see below post), and yet another night of no sleep (Mina's cold), I decided tonight's dinner was going to be super-simple, kid friendly, and to hell with worrying about adequate nutritional guidelines. I just wanted something on the table that the kids would eat, that I didn't spend an hour cooking.

Pizza.

But I didn't want to order. I wanted them to make it. Let them do the cooking for a change. Ha Ha.

I made it easy for them. Store-bought crust, Sargento shredded mozzarella cheese on their half. Spinach, artichoke hearts, roasted red peppers and goat cheese on mine and Jeff's.



The sauce though, is something worth commenting on. Locals among you - you might recognize the jar - it's from Jerry's. It's the marinara one. Love this. Even the kids like Jerry's. How could you not? The sheer amount of samples is enough to tempt even the most fickle of tastebuds. These days, I try to avoid the store as much as possible. Its evil array of good things is more than I can handle. But when I want to indulge a bit, I go straight to the cheese counter and buy a small wedge of the goat cheese called Humboldt Fog.. Sooo good.

I digress. Really got lost there for a moment thinking about that cheese.



Look how serious he is here. Once, he told me when he grew up he wanted to be a pizza delivery guy. He would own his own restaurant; and I could cook there; and he could even deliver the pizza's himself. Should the lawyer in me be disappointed by the lack of ambition here? Oh hell no. I'd be thrilled if he wanted to be a pizza delivery guy/chef/restaurateur. I'd be the first one in line to eat the very first pizza he ever made. And all the while, I'd be thinking back to each and every meal he ate at my table as a child.

As payback, I'd insist that every slice of pizza I got be comped... because after all these years of food related torture with him - I deserve it. I deserve free pizza. That's all I ask. And you never know. Every great chef had to start somewhere. Why not with pizza? Daniel Boulud, eat your heart out.



So, everything was going swimmingly. Is that a word?



They were taking turns spreading the sauce, sprinkling the cheese...



And then the chef decided that "glumping" the cheese in the middle was way more fun.



This one is so easily amused.



She thinks anything he says is funny.



I intervened long enough to assemble the grown-ups side of the pizza. Guess which one that is?



Now, pizza is - to put it in weight watcher parlance - a "trigger" food for me. What that means in English is - if you put a pizza in front of me, I will eat the whole pie. I will then be consumed with so much guilt and loathing that I will eat a bowl of ice cream and probably attempt to bake some chocolate chip cookies to wash it down with. This is called compulsive eating.

So, I try to avoid eating too much pizza because it does bad things to me. When I get some for the kids, it's usually on a night when I'm eating out. I also try to avoid eating it at the multitude of kids' birthday parties we attend. If I'm at one of yours and you notice I'm not eating, it's not because I hate your pizza. It's because I want to eat all of your pizza and then eat the entire ice cream cake and all the cupcakes too.

Even your kid's.



Which is why I'd like you to know how much restraint I exercised tonight. I gave Jeff the bigger piece of the half left to us. I ate mine and prepared a salad to go along with it so I'd be full (oh yay, zero points,) and I wrapped up everything quickly before the demon inside of me awoke and hurt someone.