When The Moon Hits Your Eye

I'll be the first to tell you: I'm a big pizza snob. And the worst part is, my favorite pizza is my own. Maybe its because you can't reliably get a pepperoni, jalapeno, potato, and green olive pizza at your local pie shop but I've invested a lot of time in what I like and, for me at least, I think it has paid off. Just like for Mexican food, I had my concerns about getting good pizza in England. Unfortunately, it appears my concerns were warranted.

We watch American Idol here, too. I'm not a huge fan (but oh my god if I saw Clay...) but the Keeper likes it and I find her interest in the show as good as anything in TV these days. Here, in England, we get the American show one day later. If you don't cheat with Google, you can still be surprised as the 'winners' are announced. (Sidenote: Coke must not pay the bills over here: all of the judge's cups are blurred so I can't make out 'Coke' and no funky Ford commercials -- even though Ford here, I think, gets much more respect than in the States.) Anyway, the point of me even mentioning the Idol is that instead of decent advertising, you get these AWFUL commercials for -- blasphemy -- a pizza over here branded as "Chicago Town Deep Dish". They show mock idol try-outs or performances and then the constestant is so distracted by these nasty looking little tiny nothing nasty (did I say nasty?) pizzas that they get a slack-jawed yokel look on their face and can't stop staring. End of commerical. There are at least 6,000 versions of this commercial.

Saturday, we decided to make our first run at pizzas in our new place. The KitchenAid didn't explode, the yeast bloomed, the cheese melted, the oven gets hot (crazy hot, actually), and we even found a good pepperoni. It all came together and made two pizzas that, we think, could hit #1 one on the UK and US pizza charts.

I, for one, was very happy. It reminded me of home, of growing up (mom taught me respect for the homemade pizza), and of our friends getting together in the REAL city where deep dish rules: CHICAGO! We miss it, fersure, and respect its good food (and variety of it) even more now. Now if I just come up with a recipe for Italian beef...


And now.... enjoy a Chicago Town Deep Dish commercial: