My wife asked if there was anything I wanted to do over the holiday break. If the weather cooperates, I'd want to make pizza. For the most part, the weather cooperated today. Was a little windier than I like. This temp with no wind is actually nice pizza making weather. Add a good breeze like today and it can get chilly. Anyhow, I made pizza today. Nothing major. Didn't invite anyone over. No special plans. Just relaxed pizza making. Tried a dough experiment that worked so-so. Like most research, that dough procedure requires more research to be conclusive. I delivered a few around the neighb ..read more

My oldest daughter was home this week for spring break from college. She brought home some Intense Milk. It is in some vending machines on campus and there are even some dedicated Intense Milk vending machines. It has been a while since the 4 of us went on a Fussy Little Blog tour and rand something, so I made up some score cards and we had a tasting. On the ballot: Vanilla: Weighing in at 490 calories per container. Strawberry: This lowfat version weighs in at 330 calories per container. Chocolate: Also lowfat and the lightest at 320 calories per container. Mint Chip: Eerily green and weighi ..read more

So this shop is located in the space where another pizza shop used to be. The original shop was here for decades, and about 20 years ago, maybe a little more, built a new, bigger space about a 1/4 mile away. Since then, I thought a few other mostly to-go places (pizzas and others) have been in this space. Maybe it was just this one with different owners. I was unaware the current version of the pizza shop was there. Bill Dowd has a blog with local events, opening and closings, that kind of stuff. Earlier today I saw that the current tenant of this space has the store up for sale and clicked o ..read more

After Thanksgiving, I brought my mother back to Connecticut. After I pulled out and started the return trip home I had an idea. The road I take goes pretty close to a restaurant in Stratford. When I was a kid, the people running this place made the pizza that is my personal Pizza Cognition Theory pizza and are really the inspiration to the wood fired oven in the back yard. The obsession started there. The current restaurant is fancier than the original location. Pizzas are only to go which would be fine tonight. I pulled over, looked up the number on the phone and ordered two pizzas. A cheese ..read more

I don't get the upside of putting a sign for a politician in your yard. Is it supposed to change someone's mind as they walk or drive by? Is it just for name recognition? Why? I've only had a political sign in the yard once. The few times I've been asked to put a sign up, I just say I live at the end of a dead end street. No one but me will see the sign. But the time I put a sign up, one of my neighbors was running, it was his sign, one house over had the opponent's sign and he wanted one of his near the opponent's sign. I avoided the awkwardness and said sure. I voted for the opponent. That w ..read more

Might have some new people poking in from Chuck Miller's blog. I had a nice conversation with him not too long ago and I think that goes online this weekend. First things first: I was a little nervous during the our talk - looking at a recording camera and speaking is not one of my strengths - so I'm going to mention a few things that I got wrong. Try to set the record straight.  The biggest and dumbest mistake was saying this blog started in 1998. It was 2008. What's a decade, really? I was going off a vague memory of looking at things online back in an apartment before I was married, bu ..read more

The sauce I use for my wood oven pizza has been evolving slowly over the years. I specify wood oven, because when I make Detroit style that is thicker than the wood oven pizza. The pizza sauce has gone from almost always being Pastene Kitchen Ready ground peeled tomatoes to various Stanislaus once I was able to get inside a Restaurant Depot. Stanislaus only make those really big #10 cans of tomatoes. But in their product line, I went from 7-11 which are a crushed tomato, to Tomato Magic which is the same as 7-11 except the tomatoes are peeled, to Alta Cucina which are whole peeled tomatoes in ..read more

Not quite a month ago, I had to go on an overnight for work. I'm still leery of being out a lot. Ordering take out and not dining in, masks and all that. So obviously when faced with an overnight trip to Queens, I pulled up map and tried to correlate places I could stay and pizza shops I wanted to try. The list of pizza places I'm curious about in Queens isn't huge. I'm sure there is more worthwhile pizza than the list. But in no particular order, the places I'd like to try are: Lucia Pizza, Flushing Amore Pizza, Flushing Philomena's, Sunnyside Louie's Pizza, Elmherst Brother's Pizza, Flushing ..read more

The winter pizza challenge was to revisit one of your Signature pizzas. I had made what I call the Fancy Pants Mushroom pizza back in November of 2019. The pizza has a base of creme fraiche (fancy pants sour cream), mushrooms sauteed in olive oil with garlic and a splash of wine. Usually some oregano in there. I've been prepping some topping in the oven during the preheat (a sheet pan of bacon cooks surprisingly quickly and well in there) and I had seen something on roasting mushrooms figured I'd give it a try. Monday was President's Day so a day off from work. Temps were also in the 40s.  ..read more

The pizza challenge was to use some kind of green pepper. Any kind. The first pizza combo that came to mind was one I hadn't made in a while. So one Friday night I made dough thinking that I might get a chance on Sunday. Plans changed and Sunday was out. Oh well. Figured I'd make bread or stromboli with most of the dough. Some might get wasted. No big deal really. It is a little bit of a waste of flour, but not much. On Monday, I came up with an idea. I'm working from home. I could walk out, start a fire and be back at the laptop in a few minutes. Pop out once in a while to toss a log in the o ..read more