I just don’t like bad pizza

I think my dad ate pretzels every day. He used to keep one of those barrels of pretzels by his chair, and he was almost always munching on them. He also liked cashews. He didn’t eat them as much – because of the cost, I assume – but he loved them quite a bit, as do I. He and I had a conversation years ago about eating healthier foods. He told me he tried salt free cashews and pretzels, which taught him that he liked salt – not cashews or pretzels.

I’ve had a similar revelation about pizza.

I remember driving with my dad in a blizzard to go pick up pizza for my tenth birthday. Like every ten year old boy, I loved pizza, but as I grew older I discovered I didn’t really like it that much. I’ve never hated it, just not one of my favorite foods. Eventually, it dawned on me that the problem was that I can easily enjoy a couple of pieces, but after that, I can’t stand the thought of it. For a long time I just assumed it was the “heaviness” of cheese and bread, or my allergy induced asthma.

When we travelled to Italy, each of us ate our own pizza almost every day – and it was fantastic. My health food nut friends told me that I was able to enjoy the pizza because the milk isn’t processed the way it is in the States. Maybe so.

More recently, we discovered an excellent local pizza shop. We’ve had the cheesesteak pizza, the taco pizza, the BBQ chicken, buffalo chicken, and the “normal” pizza. Even more recently, we decided – finally – to go vegetarian. I’ve always had concerns about the treatment of animals and of the impact of meat eating on our environment, and my daughter shares some of my concerns, so we’ve done it. She’s a vegetarian, my wife and I have gone pescetarian.

Well, we’ve learned that pizza is going to be a regular for us – especially when we were in a hurry or want something while we are out. We stopped at Tony’s on the way home from picking up our Christmas tree, and we picked up a bruschetta pizza.

And that’s when it dawned on me – I love good pizza.

It’s bad pizza, and mediocre pizza, I don’t like.