Pizza Crawl

It started when Sheila and I went to our regular place for coffee. A yellow paper stuck to the wall announced a pizza crawl.
We'd heard of pub crawls, but I'd never been on one. The pizza crawl was the same kind of thing but we would go from pizza place to pizza place then vote at the end for the one we liked best.
"That sounds like fun," I commented last week.
This week, we were back at the coffee shop with another friend who pointed out the pizza crawl. "Yeah, we were thinking about doing that," I said.
So when I got home, Sheila had sent a message to our group that said she and I were going to take part in the pizza crawl.
"Wait. I don't think I committed to that," I responded by email.
"I think you did," she replied.
So that how I ended up walking to our small downtown on Thursday evening.
I stopped by Sheila's house first where she blended up a couple of margaritas and put them in to-go cups, those cups people use to get iced coffee drinks, with lids and straws. I like to think of myself as a rule breaker, but I was pretty nervous about walking around with an alcoholic drink. We have open-container laws here, which means you can't walk the streets with an open drink. Sheila pointed out the drinks were closed cause they had lids.
I warned Tucker that he would need to come bail me out of jail if I got arrested.
Our first stop was right around the corner. A thin crust white pizza, which meant no red sauce. We picked one that had tomato slices with dots of spinach. I liked the flavor of olive oil and that the pizza wasn't overwhelming.
At the very first place, Sheila and I agreed that if we tried to eat a whole slice of pizza each, we wouldn't make it very far. So we decided to buy one slice of pizza at each restaurant and split it in two. That way we could try more.
Each slice of pizza was $1. By the time we had finished, we had visited 6 pizza places and spent $3 each. Not bad.
After the first nearby place, Sheila suggested we try some of the farther flung pizza places that we wouldn't usually visit, so we began hiking along the road and hit the two farthest ones.
One of them was in a bar. We walked in to head-banger music. Sheila called it 80s hair band music. She admitted that she used to hang out in this bar and do her homework when she was in high school because they were lax about checking IDs. She pointed out the bathrooms: "One was for using the bathroom and the other was for doing drugs."
After we got our slice of pizza, she texted her youngest, 14-year-old Thomas, and told him and his friends not to walk all the way to this bar for pizza. It didn't seem like a good idea for the unaccompanied teenagers to come to the bar. Of course, Sheila didn't have that rule for herself when she was a teenager.
The pizza in the bar was saucy and cheesy, but not too spicy. When we finished, that was our 4th shared piece of pizza, equivalent to two whole pieces. I was starting to get full. We decided to head to the farthest place in the opposite direction to try a piece of pizza another friend had recommended.
So we started walking. Throughout the evening, we walked 4. 6 miles, according to Gmaps pedometer. Walking in my Birkenstocks, after running 4.5 miles that morning and working 8 to 3, I felt the day wearing on me.
We sat down at the last place to a piece of pizza with artichoke hearts, black olives and dried tomatoes. The toppings were tasty. I ended up eating the toppings and leaving the end of the crust.
Finally, Sheila and I walked toward her house. We stopped at one last place and grabbed $1 slices of pizza to take home for our kids. I bought two very heavy meat lovers slices to take home to Tucker, covered with pepperoni, sausage, bacon and meatballs -- holy cow.
It was worth it though, cause he was happy, and I could finally put my feet up -- full of pizza and maragarita and enough exercise to not feel guilty about it.
Next time, I think I'll try a pub crawl.

Ignorance is Bliss

Yes, I know that the title is a cliche, but I've found that I wish I were ignorant about some things during this political season.
Whether you're liberal or conservative, don't you wish you didn't know the politics of the companies you buy food and laundry detergent from?
Recently, company leaders have been coming out in support of one politician or another.
The owner of Papa Johns pizza complained that under the new health care law, he would have to charge 12 to 14 cents more per pizza. (To me, that seems a small price to pay for health care. It sure wouldn't dissuade me from buying a pizza.) But truthfully, I'd rather not know Papa Johns' politics. I enjoyed their pizzas. Notice that is past tense. Now I feel like I don't want to support a company that automatically plans to push any costs onto the customers rather than the shareholders and doesn't see its employees worth insuring.
Same thing with Chick Fil A. They have delicious chicken sandwiches, but I don't feel like I should go to a restaurant that openly discriminates against gay people. There are no laws they are being forced to follow, so why did the owner share his feelings on it? Religious beliefs? Plenty of people in the 60s thought it was antiChristian for blacks and whites to marry. Would we have supported them? Taking a stand pro-discrimination is always the wrong side of history.
So now I'm getting hungry just because of politics.
Warren Buffett, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, makes no secret of his politics either. He thinks he and other rich people should pay more taxes. If people are conservative, are they taking their business away from Geico and Fruit of the Loom and other companies owned by Berkshire Hathaway?
Companies should be smarter. They may want to complain about taxes or regulation or policies, but speaking out can lose them 50 percent of their customers, which seems like its a greater financial hardship.
Keep your politics to yourself, companies, and let me keep eating your delicious food.  

Feeding Teenage Boys

I mentioned in an earlier post that money is tight this week, so my cooking habits have to change.
That's when I realized how much money I must be wasting every month, and how much processed food my boys eat. Of course, they prefer the processed food, but that's another story.
Especially on Mondays and Wednesdays, when I work in the mornings and then work again in the evenings, I'm often loathe to cook dinner. I might let the boys fend for themselves with cereal.
Their crazy schedule also adds to the mayhem.
Spencer has basketball practice after school and doesn't get home until around 6.
Tucker has musical practice (he's in the chorus of Oklahoma!) until 5:30 then goes to swim practice at 6:30 til 8:45. He can't eat too close to swim practice because he's gotten sick before.
Truthfully, there's no time during the week when we can all sit down and eat dinner together. It's easier to set out a salad and put something in the slow cooker so everyone can eat on their own time.
This week, the boys quickly ate the granola bars and peanut butter crackers that I had planned to add to their lunches. Then they stood in front of the cabinet complaining there's nothing to eat. Spencer will grab apples and clementine oranges to eat, but fruit doesn't seem to fill that gnawing in their stomaches.
I've increased my cooking and baking. Luckily, even though finances are tight, I have plenty of flour.
I used to bake homemade bread all the time. I felt like even if I fed the family spaghetti with jarred sauce, a homemade loaf of bread made it a real meal. Then the boys got to a point where they wouldn't eat my homemade bread and I started working longer hours. I baked less and less frequently.
This week, I've made up for it. So far I've baked two loaves of banana bread, chili and French bread, brownies, chocolate peanut butter cookies and a loaf of Italian bread.
Tuesday I rolled out a homemade pizza and Wednesday, before I left for work again, I pulled a quiche from the oven. When I got home from work a little after 9, Tucker was climbing out of the shower after swim practice.
"Did you eat some quiche?" I asked.
"No," he said. "I don't want any."
"I'll warm it up for you," I said.
"Okay," he agreed. Did I mention that laziness, or perhaps pure exhaustion keeps teenage boys from eating homemade food?
In spite of all that baking, the boys still walk in the house and complain that there's nothing to eat. It's a good thing that we don't eat gluten-free, because I have no idea how I would fill my boys up if they didn't eat gluten.
The loaf of Italian Herb bread on Monday was a hit and made my house smell so good that I've included the recipe here.
1 cup + 2 Tbl water
1 tsp lemon juice
2 Tbl oil
3 Tbl sugar
1 1/2 tsp. salt
2 Tbl dry milk
3 1/4 cups bread flour
2 tsp dried Italian seasoning
1 1/2 tsp dry yeast

Mix up the dough and knead it. (I don't do a lot of kneading). Let it rise then knead again and shape into a loaf. Let it rise one more time. Bake at 400 degrees for about 20 minutes.