Recycled Thoughts on Love and Pizza

It's the new year. I'm filling out job applications. But I wanted to say something. Nothing coming to mind, I thought I would recycle some old thoughts of mine via a saved e-mail sent to a friend. The topic: love for a pizza man.

Okay...I did some serious thinking today. Are you ready for this?Pizza. I am going to marry the man who is like pizza.

Okay. Take me seriously for a moment. I really thought about this. Not the cruddy $5 pizza that drips with oil even after an entire paper towel roll. Nor the frozen foods section kind that's factory made and there are a billion of them and they take 15 minutes to unthaw but they taste like it too. And I'm also not talking about the super fancy cannot-eat-it-except-in-a-suit kind. I'm just talking regular pizza-place-sit-down-restaurant-pizza-parlor pizza.

Sunshine Deli Pizza. This must be the best pizza in all of America. I have eaten pizza in Utah, Montana, Oregon, and even 3 out of 5 New York burroughs. Sunshine Deli Pizza puts them all to shame. And to think,it's been here, in my hometown and the next town over, pretty much my whole life. How could I get so lucky? God just loves me. Now, I have shared this pizza with not just US travelers, but world travelers. And you know what? It is voted the very best in America. Only Italy has one better. And I'd expect that from Italy. They invented the darn stuff.

So yeah, back to pizza. Quality ingredients. Carefully made. Not just thrown together with whatever is around. Good stuff. Real stuff. Stuff you can count on. The problem with cheaply made pizza is that it is a cheap experience. You look at it, you lift it up to drip off the oil. You look again. You just KNOW that pizza is going to give you heart trouble sooner or later. You just know.

So, I like pizza. I like the way you can dress it up, dress it down. I like the way it comes ready to eat. It can be complicated. It can be simple. You can eat it with a fork and knife on china and silk napkins. You can eat it with your hands watching a movie. Pizza is flexible and it has this basic relaxed kind of attitude. It is very hard to be arrogant or intellectually snobby being pizza. (Again, this is why you have to be careful to get good ingredients.) Morning, noon, or night. Or even late late night. There is no time limit with pizza. Any day, any time. Kind of an all-around kind of meal.

I like that concept. I like the way the pizza smell lingers on your hands even after you've washed them. I like the way the pizza taste lingers in your mouth and throat even after you've brushed your teeth, brushed your tongue, and flossed. It's still there. In the morning when you first wake up, you can kind of taste the pizza in your throat. You can't quite get rid of it and you don't want to.

I like eating pizza hot, luke warm, and cold. I like that you can eat pizza hot, luke warm, and cold. And I really like eating pizza the next morning for breakfast. I like the leftover concept of pizza.

Don't read too much into this. It's just something I thought about as I sat outside for lunch and ate a leftover piece of cold pizza from SunshineDeli today. I ate it and realized how much I enjoyed it and that got me thinking....