Slings and Arrows

Pizza Plan #4

For a Friday, it has not been a great day. Relentless rain, interminable travelling, and unsatisfactory shopping trips.

As consumers we are not as powerful as you would think in this “new economic climate of today”.  In fact, we are tired of shoddy but expensive workmanship, long-delayed orders for appliance parts that should be easily available, and the teeth grinding phone calls to “customer service” lines.

Today our friend’s car was repaired at great cost but fails to start on the first try. The small but necessary parts for our dishwasher have been on order for weeks despite assurances that “they will be in next Tuesday”. A Tuesday which never comes. One of our excursions was to pick up two chairs. One of them wobbled so badly that it nearly collapsed on itself. This was not a used chair –this was a brand new rather expensive one. The nice woman helping us said that she could give us a small discount. Who would take this chair –even for free?

Sometimes we shrug our shoulders, sometimes we laugh, but lately we have just given up expecting service that is timely and courteous or products that are worth the irritation of trying to get through the plastic packaging (plastic that can’t even be recycled.)

The Sicilian has just commented that the pizza is just an annotation to this column, so I guess I better get to it. Today’s pizza is to comfort one through life’s small but surprisingly painful pricks.

Antidote to Life’s Slings and Arrows Pizza

1. Start with pizza dough (we made ours in a bread maker.)

2. Make tomato sauce (empty a can of Italian tomatoes in a colander to drain, crush the tomatoes with the back of a spoon, place contents in a bowl, and add teaspoon of salt.) You can impress your friends by calling it Salsa Semplice.

3. Make yourself a Bloody Caesar (if you are not Canadian, you can make yourself a Bloody Mary.) Garnish with a pickled bean or a celery stick if you are a traditionalist. We pickle our own beans so we like them instead.  Drink the cocktail.

4. Plead with the Sicilian to roll out the dough and toss it in the air like Italians are supposed to do.

5. Preheat oven at 500.

6. Brush the now rolled out dough with olive oil, spoon tomato sauce on it, put tablespoon blobs of pesto on (we used our friend Richard’s pesto which happens to be cilantro pesto), but we also threw on some fresh basil leaves too.

7. Put on a couple of pieces of prosciutto and cover with whatever leftover cheese you have in the fridge (in this case we used port salut, cheddar, and some other unidentifiable cheese).

8. Bake for 12 minutes or until the edges start turning brown.

Enjoy with a glass of Averill Creek Pinot Noir and thank the universe for being alive to feel the slings and arrows.