Pizza, Pizza

You must understand, when it comes to cooking and presenting food, Mark is a perfectionist. He not only delivers a meal equal to or better than four star restaurants, he makes it look fabulous. I, on the other hand, am like a hog at the trough. I will eat something right out of the refrigerator, still in its Tupperware container. If it tastes good enough, I won't even heat it up, I'll just stand there over the kitchen sink scarfing it down. before I met Mark many a dinner was eaten that way.

It started as a faint "help!" coming from the kitchen, and quickly escalated to a screaming, cursing, tirade. Before I could make it around the corner, and into the kitchen to see what the hell was up, the banging of the pots and pans started. Mark had a full scale cooking disaster happening. Tonight's dinner was to be homemade pizza pie, and all afternoon I could see, hear, and smell the preparations. Pizza dough on the counter rising into a yeasty ball, followed by the chop, chop, chop of onions, peppers, and sausage. Now, instead of seeing a lovely pizza pie on the counter, there was a misshapen mass of dough, sauce, and toppings, like a three dimensional Salvador Dali painting. Standing in front of it all, was Mark, red faced, and screaming. He was literally vibrating with rage. Mark's pizza had stuck to the large wooden paddle he uses to slide the thing into the oven, and it had folded over onto itself and then continued to slide off over the edge. It was ugly.

It was obvious that if I had been one second slower getting into the kitchen, the whole thing would have been heaved out the back door. It took a few minutes, but I did finally calm Mark down, and between the two of us, we coaxed the disfigured mess onto a pan, and into the oven. Ten minutes later Mark pulled out a bubbling, cheesy, blob and slammed it onto the counter. "It's a piece of shit! It's ruined!" Once again I calmed him down, and after cutting the thing up and plating it, we sat down to eat. It was delicious. Did it look pretty? No, it did not. Did I give a shit what it looked like? Hell no. I've eaten my own leftover cooking out of a Tupperware container over the sink, and Mark's worst is a hundred times better than that.

I could not get a photo of the pizza before it was cooked, and I had to sneak the one I took of the finished product. Obviously, Mark was a little sensitive about it.