Show Your Pass at the Gate

Tomorrow is shaping up to be an exciting day, by my standards.

I have doubts about the Bouncer flour I’ve been using to make pizza at church, so I put a couple of pounds in a bag, and I’m going to make test pies tomorrow. I also took a pound of Sorrento cheese and a pound of Arrezzio cheese, which is distributed by Sysco.

We had toppings that were not going to make it to Sunday, so I took some of those, too. I had to chuck a lot of sauce due to age considerations, so I stuck some in a bag, and it’s in my fridge. This stuff will be fine tomorrow and Friday, but by Sunday, it would be too risky to use it.

I have to see if either cheese compares to Kirkland, and I also plan to do a sauce experiment. If it works, I should end up with the tastiest pizza sauce imaginable. Mike was jealous when I described it to him. I have a secret ingredient.

Pizza hobbyists have been needling me because I make dough in an hour, instead of letting it ferment for days. In the past, when I’ve tried leaving dough in the fridge overnight, it has been a little better than usual (I think), but not enough to justify the aggravation. And who can plan pizza a day in advance? That’s insane. Meatloaf, you can plan a day in advance. Because you don’t care if you ever see it on the table. But pizza is too good to put off.

I’m going to slap some dough together today with less yeast than usual, and I’ll let it rise for a day. We’ll see what happens.

I know sourdough would be worth the wait, but plain old yeast?

Pizza nuts talk about “poolishes” and “preferments.” I’d be pretty excited about those things, if I were not already making the best pizza I know of.

Mike may be here on Saturday. If so, Sunday will be interesting. I’ve threatened to turn him loose in the church kitchen, making garlic rolls. Should be a blast. I was hoping he’d be here early enough on Saturday to help me make test pies, but maybe we can do that on Monday.

I have to hit the store to get my secret ingredient. In fact, I need to get two versions of it. Hope it works.

Free Pizza

Last night, I believe I moved 6 pizzas, not including two I had to bake and give away. The cafe didn’t get much business.

The pastor who does the Tuesday services has a policy of locking the cafe doors while he’s preaching, to keep people in the sanctuary. That means you sell maybe two pizzas before the service, and then you get another chance at around 9:30 p.m., while people are leaving. So there is a limit to what you can do.

A couple of weeks ago I sold around 20 pizzas on a Tuesday. I’m not sure how that happened. I think they promoted it during the service.

Anyway, I’m thinking I should drop Tuesdays. It’s not worth it to drive up there and spend six hours just to make the church $60. And that figure is reduced when I have to throw out ingredients due to bad business. I can show someone else how to do it. I’m planning to write a manual.

Trinity is a church, not a restaurant. That means they want people in the sanctuary, not the cafe. I believe I overestimated their interest in making the cafe run at a profit. The church has a huge mortgage to pay, and the impression I got from what I was told was that they would like the cafe to do well, but now I think I may have misunderstood. I think they just want a credible cafe that runs briefly for short periods on Tuesdays, Saturdays, and Sundays, and if it runs at a loss, it’s okay, as long as it’s not a big loss.

I have to get serious about finding people to do what I do. I’m supposed to be an armorbearer, and the head armorbearer needs me on Sundays, so I need to free myself up. Knowing the way the church runs, I know the cafe might not exist in three months, but the armorbearers will always be needed. I want to be where I’ll do some long-term good.

We could net the church $50,000 or so per year if we made an effort. More, if we really tried. But maybe that would require putting too much energy into business.

It can be frustrating, trying to help a church. People get very excited about projects when they start, but after a short time, the energy tends to disappear, and things just peter out. I had a warehouse full of construction materials I wanted to give the church, and they were interested at first, but over a year later, nothing had happened. I couldn’t get anyone to come check it out. In the end, all this stuff was given away to the person who cleaned out the warehouse. I could have sold it myself and given the church the money.

Maybe the best way to help a church is not to give them your ideas. Maybe the smart move is to keep your ideas, make the money yourself, and give out of the proceeds. The cafe is never going to make money running twelve hours a week, but a pizzeria could make me money, and I could support the church out of the profits.

I’ll say this. I’ve learned a great deal working at the cafe. I’m much more efficient than I used to be. Last night I arrived at 5:30, and by 6:30, I had a whole bunch of crusts rising in pans, and there was pizza ready to eat.

Our new mixer will be here next week. Once we get that, I should be able to come in early, make 20 crusts, and then leave the rest of the work to other people. That should get me out of the kitchen so I can do my other job.

I don’t know where we’re headed, but so far, it’s been tremendous fun.

Pope Prius I Drops a Curse on Me

Mike has failed me. He was supposed to be in Miami this week. We were going to cook at church, possibly leading to our being held hostage by the crowd and forced to continue cooking until the gas ran out.

It’s a big week, too. First of all, next week is the Jesus of Nazareth play, so attendance will be good. Easter brings the contrite out of their holes. Second, I have new sample cheeses to try.

Our Sysco rep brought Sorrento whole-milk mozzarella and Arrezzio mozzarella. I heard a rumor that Arrezzio is the same as Kirkland, so I had to try it. I wanted to bake a bunch of test pies, with Mike’s help. And he’s not here…because his PRIUS is sick.

I asked him what he was doing for clean laundry. [rimshot]

He said lived across the street from Sears, so he just walked over there and bought new huskies.

I had forgotten huskies. The only thing worse than being a kid who wears fat pants is being a kid who wears fat pants with the word “HUSKY” attached to the waistband.

Anyway, if he can get his Prius working (I think the agitator is bent), he’ll be here this weekend. If he could be here on Saturday, it would be tremendous. We could occupy the church kitchen and have the armorbearers judge the cheese.

Speaking of fat pants, I won’t be wearing mine any time soon. By the end of the week, with God’s help, I’ll probably be down 28 pounds from August. At that point, if I still look bad, it will be because I’m ugly, not fat. There’s a difference.

The cast of the play will need food. Mike HAS to be here. We can try to kill them. Talk about epic. Pray for Mike’s Prius!

What should I make for the cast? Just pizza? I was thinking ziti, chili, macaroni and cheese, brownies, and maybe cheesecake. Not all of these things at once. But I was thinking I might make some of them.

I still have to try Cento cherry tomatoes on pizza. They’re sitting in my kitchen cabinet. I’m sure they’ll be no good, since other people have tried them, but there is no substitute for personal research.

These are the exciting things that occupy my mind today.

Let’s all Take a Deep Breath

Yesterday I wrote an entry about working in the kitchen at my church, and I pointed out that I had to be careful where I left a sharp Chinese cleaver, because the women who worked there were liable to injure themselves with it. I mentioned a lady who cut herself with it because she used it as a spatula. And I noted that women don’t seem to do very well with sharp knives.

People seem to think I was expressing contempt for the people in the kitchen, particularly the lady who cut herself. Sorry if I gave you that impression, but that wasn’t the point. As a matter of fact, the lady who cut herself is an unusually sharp and classy person. Speaks three languages fluently. The fact that she doesn’t know what to do with a Chinese cleaver does not make her stupid.

As for the generalization about women and knives, I’ve found it to be true. Most men are bad about sharpening their kitchen knives, but I’ve only seen women complain about knives being too sharp. Men tend to like sharp tools.

The safety concern is very real. When you work in an institutional kitchen, everybody shares equipment, and if the workers are volunteers, they often don’t know what they’re doing. No one who goes into a church kitchen is going to expect to pick up a knife that will pop the tiniest hairs off an arm and leave nothing behind it. They’ll assume it’s dull like all the other knives. One of the most likely ways to learn differently is to carve up a hand.

I can’t go to church and line everyone up and ask who is going to defy my expectations. I can’t hold a knife safety class. That means I have to make sure that if I have a sharp knife, nobody gets a chance to use it without asking me first. I should never have left my cleaver where other people could see it.

I ordered a cleaver for the church because I’m not willing going to suffer, using the church’s horrible knives to chop pizza toppings. I guess I’ll get a diamond hone, too. And I’m getting a Chinese Chan Chi Kee meat cleaver and a smaller Chinese vegetable cleaver for myself. I’m sold on the cheap Chinese stuff. You can put a fine edge on a Chinese carbon-steel cleaver in ten seconds, and my cleaver outperforms a Shun by a mile.

My Shun cleaver hasn’t been used since maybe a month after I bought it. That was years ago. There is a reason for that. Experience proved it wasn’t a very good cleaver. If it had worked well, I’d still be using it. Sometimes you have to admit the pretty toy you bought was a waste of money.

I guess I could donate the Shun to the church. But I don’t believe in giving God hand-me-downs I wouldn’t want for myself. There’s always the Salvation Army. They could sell it, along with the chipped Shun santoku I never use. And my Tojiro nakiri.

A commenter recommended Old Hickory carbon-steel knives. One of the few things I got from my grandmother’s house was her old rusty butcher knife. I don’t know if it’s an Old Hickory or not. I’m afraid to use it, because it’s kind of a museum piece. Fortunately I have a huge Forschner scimitar knife to fill the need.

Plus More Food Network Fail

I had a fine day of pizza-making at Trinity Church.

Today I decided to go Hawaiian. I made pizzas with pineapple, onions, ricotta, and ham. They were very good, but for some reason, Hawaiian toppings seem to work best on thin pizza. And the people at my church are addicted to pepperoni. I had a hard time getting rid of the Hawaiians, except for the few highly cultured people who knew the score. They were thrilled.

I also made pies with kalamatas, onions, green peppers, and ham. I am told a lot of people at Trinity have problems with ham, because it’s “slave food.” Arrggh. Where did this myth come from? Slaves ate pork. No doubt about it. So did their rich masters. In the South, pork is not considered poverty food. Everybody loves it. So giving someone pork to eat is not a sign of disrespect.

The crazy thing about the “slave food” idea is that Muslims like to push it. And who treats black people worse than Muslims? They were big in the slave trade. Still are! And Mohammed was a red-headed white man.

Whatever. I’m not going to quit putting pork on pizza. I wonder if people realize pepperoni is pork.

There is nothing like pork. No other readily available meat can begin to do what it does. Pork is magical. Pork means ribs, bacon, country ham, prosciutto, serrano ham, chicharrones, biscuits, cream gravy, redeye gravy, salt pork, lechon asado, and ham hocks. We’re talking about some of the finest eating available. I love a good prime steak, but other than that, beef isn’t in the same league.

I wish I hadn’t brought this up. I’m planning to start a fast soon. Ordinarily, I don’t like to talk about fasts with much specificity, because Jesus cautioned people about passing themselves off as hyper-righteous while fasting. But since I admit I’m fasting for purely selfish reasons, and because I don’t pretend to feel spiritual while I’m doing it, I have no problem mentioning this fast. I plan to whine pretty much continuously. That’s just how I roll.

I’m fasting because I want more power and freedom in my life. And I want God to help my dad and my sister. To me, it’s like taking a flea dip. It’s all about me and my needs. I got some good stuff when I fasted before, and I want more. How’s that for asceticism?

We still have no slicer at church, so I took my $10 Chinese cleaver. Don’t be foolish and buy a Shun or another high-end Japanese vegetable cleaver until you’ve tried the Chinese carbon-steel jobs. This thing has nice hard steel, it sharpens fast, and it will take an edge so fine you can hold a paper towel in front of you and wave the cleaver through it like a light saber. Okay, not quite like a light saber. But it will cut all the way through in one easy pass.

A lady volunteer thought it was a spatula, and she pried a slice of pizza off a pan. Later, when I realized this, I told her to watch out, because it was actually a razor-sharp knife. Then she showed me the cut on her hand. She was lucky; it was tiny. You could easily cut your self to the bone with this thing before you realized you had a problem.

It’s frustrating, having sharp kitchen knives around women. They never expect knives to be sharp, and it seems like whenever a woman picks up a sharp kitchen knife, the blood starts to flow. You have to watch them and hide the knives. I tried to keep mine to myself today, but she found it anyway.

My mother used to get mad at me for sharpening knives. Can you imagine?

The Chinese cleaver has mysterious powers. For some reason, you can mince with it, much faster and better than you could with a regular knife with an edge of the same length. You can load food on it and move it. You can cut food–even big food–in slices so thin they’re transparent. It’s sturdy enough to cut meat. It’s thin enough to cut potatoes and yuca without being dangerous. It adds iron to your food. And when you use it, you look like Bruce Lee.

I’m getting one for the church. But where will we store it to keep women from killing themselves while using it to flip pancakes? I’m also getting a smaller cleaver for myself. Six bucks. I mean COME ON. How can I not? You can find them at Wok Shop.

I have a Shun and a Tojiro. The Shun is worthless. Alton Brown is a fine person, but the Shun is still worthless, as is my Shun santoku, which chipped badly from the terrible stress of sitting in a dishwasher. The Shun cleaver is the wrong shape and size for anything you will want to do with it. I’ll bet I haven’t used mine in three years.

The Tojiro is a nice cleaver for big jobs, but it was very expensive, and I’m afraid to use it, and you can get a Chan Chee Ki for like $25.

The down side of Chinese cleavers is that they rust, IF you can’t figure out how to use a paper towel. However you don’t have to worry about big pieces falling out of them because the dishwasher is just too stressful for their dainty constitutions. Alton Brown hand-washes his Shuns, handling them as though they were booby-trapped hemophiliac burn victims with painful fractures that needed to be set.

No wonder. If you let one drop into your sink, you would find chunks of it on the bottom later.

The crazy thing about Brown and his washing technique is that he demonstrates it in a video intended to sell Shun knives. “Look what a pain it is to take care of these! And a set only costs three thousand dollars! Buy a bunch of them! Wait, come back!”

My Shun bird’s beak paring knife is also worthless. My $5 Forschner holds a better edge and sharpens faster, and it’s a more useful size and shape. And it’s tougher. I’m not quite sure what it is about the Shun that’s supposed to make it desirable.

If you like cool knives, buy Shuns. If you like to cook, buy Chinese.

No, don’t buy Shuns no matter what. They are the beige minivans of Japanese knives. There are far cooler knives available on the web. If you’re going to buy cuteness instead of functionality, do it right. Go to Japanesechefknife.com and look around. Check out the Mr. Itou knives. You’ll wonder why anyone ever bought a Shun.

I wonder why I did.

God is really something. Imagine a being who could give me something so wonderful after a fast that I would come to look forward to fasting. I am determined to move forward and build on what I have.

I better have some pie.

More

Turns out my Japanese bird’s beak knife is actually a Tojiro, not a Shun. Whatever it is, it does not hold an edge, and the rest of my comments still apply.

It Never Stops

Life continues to improve. Seems like I say that every day.

This morning, I thought about a problem many people have. They work all their lives and achieve things that are important to them, and then they slow down, and finally, they are no longer able to do what they used to do. They sit on the sidelines and reminisce and feel ignored. Nostalgia makes them suffer, which makes sense, since “nostalgia” is formed partly from a Greek root meaning “pain.”

A Christian who walks by faith should not have this problem. When you walk by faith, God never stops challenging you and putting you to use. Your function may change, but you’ll always have to get up in the morning and set your heart on obeying God. You’ll have to make a conscious decision to ignore the ever-present deceptive evidence that he will not stand by you and help you. Faith is a job from which you can’t retire. And because it never stops, you should expect to keep growing as long as you live, barring dementia.

That’s a wonderful thing. Maybe nostalgia for your glory days is a sign that you were chasing the wrong dream. Christianity is about progress; it’s not about amassing a certain number of achievements and then waiting to die. It’s always about the present and future. Maybe this is what the Bible means when it says God will renew our youth like the eagle’s.

My pastor makes our worship team learn new songs all the time. It’s annoying, because probability guarantees that new songs are not as likely to be good as old ones, and because you can’t sing along with a song you don’t know. But he does it anyway, because he wants us to continue renewing our minds. He mentioned it last night. He said he didn’t want us to get Alzheimer’s. He understands the need to keep moving.

Whatever a Bible-believing, Spirit-filled Christian may lack, he always has something other people may not have: a bright future. There is nothing you can do to us that God can’t turn into a great blessing later on. Eleven of the Apostles were martyred, but they died in victory, because their futures were assured. How can you top that?

Worldly people and Satan own the things that dissolve and pass away. God and his servants own everything else. If you don’t believe, you’re like a passenger clinging to a sinking ship. You can take supplements and have yourself injected with cells from aborted babies and have plastic surgery and exercise compulsively, but the ship will still sink. Sooner or later, you’re going to be in the water. The thing that makes you feel secure is going to vanish. The thing that makes a Christian feel secure can never be touched. We’re like the Whos down in Whoville. You can’t steal our Christmas. You can’t take away a reward which is in a world you’ll never be allowed to enter.

Paul used a word meaning “dung” to describe the things he valued before he came to Christ. Can a man with that attitude ever feel nostalgia? Can he ever feel that his past was better than the present? I don’t see how.

So anyway, life continues to improve.

The church has a new mixer on the way. A commercial mixer was too expensive, so we’re getting a Bosch Universal Plus with a stainless bowl. This will be fantastic. I’ll be able to make dough for 14 pizzas at a shot. If I run this thing twice in a day, I’ll cover my needs. This is going to get me out of the kitchen.

I’m also preparing to do pizzas with better toppings. Pepperoni isn’t solving all our problems, but I didn’t want to do toppings on demand, because it would require maybe ten bowls of prepared toppings, and it’s also a logistical impossibility, since most people won’t wait long enough for specially prepared pies. I realized I could put together toppings for a loaded pizza and then add them to pies as needed. I’d only have to prepare toppings once a day, and we’d have some variety. I’m thinking I’ll do a mix of ham, black olives, onions, and green peppers.

I can also do other varieties from time to time. I need to find out whether people will eat pineapple. If so, I’ll do pineapple, ricotta, onions, and ham.

In fact, I think I’ll do that whether they ask for it or not. Sometimes people have to be trained.

Mike will be in town soon. That will be a blast. I’m going to put him to work making garlic rolls for the church.

I’m thinking about making a trap for my BB gun, so I can put targets up in the garage and do rapid-fire drills. A frame about two feet wide and three feet high should work. I think point-shooting skills will be a great asset to me, and it’s much more fun than slow fire.

My weight loss continues. I’m down 26 pounds now, and I’m doing virtually nothing. It’s all God’s work. I’m getting into clothes I couldn’t wear for years. I haven’t been this thin since about 1996.

My social life gets better and better. I feel like part of the church now. I don’t wander in and out unnoticed. I enjoy the people tremendously, and their wonderful outlook is a powerful remedy to Miami rudeness. It’s hard to tolerate Miami when you never get a break from the hostility, but now I have a stronghold to which I can retreat.

Christianity is not just about avoiding hell or getting dribbly bits of help in a catastrophe. It’s about a God who will show his power in your life every day, in proportion to your devotion and willingness to pray. The God who fed Elijah and parted the Red Sea and made Solomon rich and reanimated the rotten corpse of Lazarus is still in business. I’m a witness, and I have nothing to gain by telling you.

Hope your day will be as blessed as mine. Or more.

Blessed is the Pizzamaker

Sometimes when God gives you exactly what you asked for, it can be very hard to realize it.

There is an old story I’ve heard and read more than once this year. A flood comes. A guy is trapped on his roof. He prays for God to help him. A kid goes by in a canoe, and offers the guy a ride, but he turns it down, saying God is going to rescue him. Two men in a bass boat go buy and offer to help. He turns them down, saying God is going to rescue him. A National Guard helicopter arrives, and a cable comes down with a harness, and the crew signals for him to put it on. He turns them down, shouting that God is going to rescue him.

He drowns. He asks God why he didn’t rescue him. God says, “I sent a canoe, a bass boat, and a helicopter.”

What’s the other side of the coin? You get the help you need, and then you tell God, “Never mind! It worked out without your help.”

Lately I’ve had concerns about a piece of doctrine that may be heresy. A well-known pastor who has a TV show has been telling people to “loose angels” to fix their problems. He says he ordered angels to bring him money for his ministry, and a man showed up with a five-figure check, almost immediately. On top of that, he doesn’t command one or two angels. He’ll issue orders to a hundred thousand, which seems extravagant, given that one angel killed the firstborn of Egypt in a single night, and one angel killed 185,000 Assyrians between sunset and sunrise. How many angels do you need to bring you a check?

I know of no Biblical example of a person commanding an angel. Even Jesus said he would ask his father to send angels, which is not the same thing. I think commanding angels is idolatry. You may think you’re commanding angels of God, but what if you’re commanding demons without knowing it? I will not take part in this practice without confirmation that it’s correct.

In spite of this concern, the new doctrine has reminded me that you can ask God to send his servants to help you. So I do that. These days, I ask him to send out his servants, both spirit and human, to deliver me and my family from trouble, to bring us blessings, and to teach us so we can avoid chastisement. I have no problem doing this. I’m not presuming to tell an angel what to do, nor am I asking for venal pleasures or things the flesh can put to bad use. I just want protection, guidance, and growth. It’s like asking your company to send consultants or new employees to help you get its business done. It’s to advance God’s goals, not mine.

Last night I made pizza at the church. This is a gargantuan job for one person. I have to arrive two hours before the first pie is served, driving through 18 miles of Miami traffic. I have to mix the yeast and water. I have to make dough over and over. Prepare 10 pans. Make sauce. Get pies ready to go in the oven. Bake them twice. Slice them and put them on the steam table. I have to clean up after myself and others. One person can’t do it well.

People have been offering to help, but they haven’t come through yet. Some are busy. Last night, however, a guy named Anthony showed up to work in the cafe, and on his own initiative, he started helping in the kitchen.

I taught this guy almost everything, and boy, did he make a difference. I never had to show him anything twice. He did everything well. He anticipated needs that would come up in the future, much better than I do. With his help, I had so much dough ready to bake, I was able to sit down for maybe forty-five minutes. At the end of the night, we had to bake two pizzas and give them away, because he was too efficient. He had prepared more than we needed. He also worked the fryolator; the pastor who usually runs it couldn’t be there, and nobody else knew anything about it. He kept me going, he kept the fries going, and then at the end of the night, he washed things up before I could get to them. I literally had a hard time finding things to clean up.

I couldn’t get much information out of him. He said it was his first night at Trinity! He hadn’t bothered with the service. He had gone straight to the kitchen. Nobody does that. He said he had been going to Pentecostal Something or Other, on 7th Avenue. I tried to promote the church to him, listing the things it offered.

I could barely get him to talk. Most of the time, he just said, “Okay,” and started getting things done.

There were times when I truly wondered if he were a human being. God sometimes clothes angels in flesh and sends them to do things. At the very least, he was an answer to my prayer for human help. Not just an answer, but an extremely appropriate and effective answer.

As for the leftover pies, one of the girls said that if I boxed them up, she’d see if she could find some homeless people to give them to. That’s not waste. These people would be receiving food from a church, worked and shaped by the hands of people baptized with the Holy Spirit. That has to be a good thing. You can’t tell me God doesn’t work through objects that have come into contact with anointed people.

In my opinion, the extra pies were a blessing.

Naturally, I’m all freaked out.

I don’t want to be like the guy on the roof. I’m not going to wait for a helicopter and still think God is ignoring me. I think Anthony was the kid with the canoe.

If Anthony is on the job, what about the other helpers I’ve asked for? They must be at work, too. God has told us his angel encamps around those who fear him, and that the angel delivers them (Psalm 34). God says he gives his angels charge over us (Psalm 91). God has never lied.

My testimony seems to get better and better, regardless of the challenges I face. I keep going out on a limb of faith, and God keeps holding me up. I leap into space over and over, and he catches me, even though my faith is not perfect. It’s incredible, but it’s true.

It’s important to note that my faith is not perfect. Neither is my behavior. You should always work to have faith and avoid sin, but God can be extremely powerful in your life even when you have doubts or chronic transgressions. Never let anyone tell you you have to be perfect to get God on your side. Think of the people Jesus healed. He didn’t heal the Apostles. He healed drunks and beggars and so on. It’s always better to be good, but your failures won’t destroy you as long as you stay on the path. I believe the trend, not your current location, is what matters.

Moving on to another subject, I had a very odd dream last night. I was trying to cook something, and I noticed lizards had befouled a measuring pitcher I was trying to use. In Miami, this can actually happen. I started cleaning it up at the sink. I reached into a cupboard for something, and I saw a lizard’s toe hanging down into view, and I grabbed some sort of ceramic vessel, like a cup with portions cut out of the sides, and it was full of lizards having group sex. This, too, can actually happen, although the group size is limited to two!

I walked this thing to the back door and shook the lizards out into the yard. At this point, somehow, they had become a single lizard. It landed on a tree by the door, which was covered with snowy white cockatoos. I knew the lizard was in trouble. A cockatoo started climbing down to get him, and he leapt into the yard, where a bluejay grabbed him and took off. Birds do that here. There are lots of bugs for the lizards, and lots of lizards for the birds.

Last night, before going to bed, I saw a gecko in the laundry room. These are very creepy lizards because of their appearance and movement. Though dry, they appear slimy, and they undulate like snakes. This wasn’t one of the usual house geckos we have here. This was a new kind. Bigger and creepier. Every year, something new shows up in town.

It took off down the wall to get away from me, and I told it that it was welcome to hang around and poop wherever it wanted, as long as it ate plenty of roaches. The lizards in the dream were Jamaican anoles, though.

I wonder if the dream has significance. I see the lizards in the cupboard as household demons, making trouble. They interfere with things that need to be done. I see the cockatoos as angels, guarding the “gates” of the house. I see the bluejay as a warring angel that carried off a demon and got it out of my life.

Was the house a house, or was it me?

I guess this has no relevance, but I insure my vehicles with GEICO.

Today I’m waiting for UPS to deliver the ridiculous Makarov BB pistol I ordered. I have to get my point-shooting up to speed. Sadly, UPS requires me to be here to receive it, to prevent punk kids from getting annoying toys via mail order. It ought to be tremendous fun. But I have to sit here all day or miss it. And knowing UPS, there is a good chance it won’t arrive before I have to leave for tonight’s volunteer meeting at church.

I think I’m going to recommend this to the other armorbearers. Can’t hurt.

No Heat

This is a black day.

I made pizza at church on Sunday. The main oven pooped out. I was supposed to make pizza tonight, at a service which usually draws over a thousand people. I called about the oven, and it has not been fixed.

Tonight hundreds of people who are hungry for pizza as well as righteousness will show up at my church, and they will not be filled.

I guess it’s a good thing. I can relax and stay home tonight. I’d like to go to the service, but I have another one tomorrow, and attendance is mandatory.

I still have not received my gun parts. It’s killing me. I have to see my Vz58 properly dressed, with a pretty green laser and a strobing 200-lumen flashlight that causes nausea and disorientation. Surely I don’t have to explain.

It turns out the cheap Vz58 rifles selling at Classicarms.us are made by Century Arms, not D-Technik. This is why they cost around half as much. Caveat emptor.

Dang. The church just called. The oven MAY be working, so I have to go see what I can do.

Bye.

Fasting to Resume

When are my gun parts supposed to get here? I know they’re coming from Israel, but it’s taking so long, you would think they’re carving them from bar stock with a Dremel tool.

I guess you can’t carve plastic parts from bar stock. But still.

There should be plenty of stuff to keep me busy until the parts arrive. Tomorrow I’ll be making pizza at church again, assuming the oven is working. I hope they get it fixed. It’s depressing, making ten portions of dough, baking six, and throwing the rest out while customers wonder why we won’t sell them pizza.

I’m also working on a handbook for the armorbearers at my church. The big hindrance here is that I’m a lowly, relatively new armorbearer, and I’m the one writing the book. The higher-ups know much more than I do. My strategy is to lay out the chapters, fill them with blather that seems right to me, and then go to my superiors and work with them to fix it. Editing is always easier than writing from scratch.

Okay, it’s usually easier. Sometimes the best thing to do with something a person wants you to edit is burn it.

The church is putting on a play pretty soon. A passion play. Today the head Servant Leader asked for armorbearer volunteers to help strike the set on the Sunday night after the last show. I had to refrain from signing on. The last time I tried to help strike a set, the stage was filled with volunteers who had no leaders and no directions, and somebody dropped a huge piece of plywood scenery on me and left me with an injury that hurt for weeks. I feel that my career as a stagehand has come to a close. But I did send a return text, mentioning the possibility of cooking.

I got out my book and started looking for likely dishes, but all I could come up with was baked ziti. My other real crowd-pleasers have wine or liquor in them, and I would feel a little funny slinging a bottle of Marsala around in a church kitchen.

Baked ziti is a fine thing. That is especially true when you use pizza-quality ingredients. But I’m not sure it’s far enough from pizza.

I could do chicken curry, but while the Jamaicans and Trinis would eat it, the Haitians would probably think I was trying to poison them. Not everyone in the Caribbean appreciates a good habanero.

All I know is, I don’t want any more sets falling on me.

I’ve decided to get more serious about fasting. Last year, I got permanent deliverance from gluttony after a fast, and my behavior improved in other respects. But fasting started cutting into my week very badly, and I scaled back. I think I’ll do a good long session. I truly believe ordinary people have demons assigned to oppress them, and that these things show up in bad habits that are hard to control. I know of three proven examples in my own life, plus an illness that left as a visible spirit fled my body, and I’m sure I’m not alone. And I’m not the only person who believes this. You don’t have to be running around naked in a cemetery, eating rats, to be under the influence of a demon.

Maybe the way I was fasting last year was wrong. Maybe fasting a lot every week is not as good as long fasts, farther apart. I’m supposed to do one partial-day fast each week as an armorbearer, but other than that, maybe it’s not a great idea to clutter every week with fasting.

I look forward to this, because I know how powerful fasting is. I hate every second of it, but look what it does for you. I make pizza semi-professionally twice a week, and I’m still losing weight. Slowly, sure, and with little fluctuations, but it’s happening. And yesterday while I made pizza, guess what I ate? Two crummy protein bars, half a tuna sandwich (forgot to eat the second half), and half a chocolate bar.

Fasting evicts trespassers. I think the story of Jesus’s forty-day fast is an example for everyone. Even Jesus was oppressed demonically. His demon was Satan himself, and after the fast, Satan gave up and left, just like lesser demons fled the people Jesus and the disciples freed. It was after the forty-day fast that the real power began to flow. I suspect that the same principle applies to all of us. God probably doesn’t want to drop major power on people who are subject to a lot of malevolent influence from hidden co-pilots.

How long would the average bariatric surgery patient be willing to fast, in order to get what I got? It’s an incredible blessing. In my own small way, I know how people who have been healed of cancer feel. It’s fantastic to get free of something you ordinarily would be unable to conquer. The general rule with fat people is that they stay fat and get fatter. And the worst part is, you do it to yourself, and you can’t stop.

I love being free. What if I can get free of the majority of my big behavioral and attitudinal problems by fasting? From what I’ve seen so far, it’s highly likely. It’s clearly worth a shot.

When I fasted last year, some beings that were accompanying me through life realized I was going to be doing this kind of thing for the rest of my days, and they said, “We have had ENOUGH of this guy. We QUIT.” I need to resume deportations.

God willing, my testimony is going to be even better later this year than it is now. I can’t wait.

The Spirit Moves Me

I had a good day at church, although looking at it superficially, it would not seem so.

Last night I forgot about the time change (or rather, I didn’t know the date in the first place, because I don’t watch TV). I went to bed at the usual hour, thinking everything was swell. Then a neighbor’s unbelievably loud party woke me up at what I thought was 11:00 p.m. I was not too happy about it, but I try not to make trouble for my neighbors if I can avoid it (Psalm 15), so I did not call the cops. Besides; this party had a loud emcee who was yelling in Spanish between salsa numbers, and from the sound of it, the party was quite a distance away. That usually means a fundraiser with a permit. Unbelievably, Coral Gables–the city which will prosecute you for painting your interior walls without permission–will allow you to keep your neighbors up until three a.m. if you get a permit.

While I was lying there awake, I remembered that the time change was in the news, and I checked to see if it was upon me. It was. That was fabulous. I had thought I was being kept awake until 1:00, on the night before rising at 6:00 to make pizza at church. In reality, I was being kept awake until 2:00.

Drove to church and got things moving. Things get more and more efficient; these days I try to make big batches of everything. I started by making about a gallon of yeast mixture, and as soon as I could, I began making dough with the woefully inadequate and messy Kitchenaid mixer.

I managed to get ten batches of dough done, and then I started making pizza, and things went great, except that very few people bought any. Apparently, I was not the only one who forgot the time change.

Things looked better after the second service, but then I realized the pizza wasn’t getting cooked. We had the same problem on Tuesday. The burner in the big convection oven refuses to turn on after a while, so it gets cooler and cooler, until you’re warming raw pizza instead of baking it.

We had a guy look at it this week, but evidently, he did not look at it hard enough. I managed to make a few pizzas in the smaller oven, but eventually, I gave up, and I had to throw out a gallon of sauce and four portions of dough. Orders were cancelled. Depressing.

He’s going to look at it again.

I wandered around looking for things to do, and down the hall, through a glass door, I saw what appeared to be part of an EMT truck, with a flashing light. I got to the end of the hall, and there were three EMTs working on a girl on a table. One of my fellow armorbearers was there. I helped with crowd control. Church was emptying, and half of the crowd had to leave through those doors.

The girl was about 15 and thin. I could see her bare feet at the end of the table, beside the paramedics. Her feet were shaking, as though she were jerking or seizing. Someone had found her unconscious in a bathroom. She was conscious when I saw her, but only barely. They were trying to get her to answer questions.

Prime opportunity to pray. I always pray when I see an ambulance. It’s a rule I have. If I tried to break it, I think I’d be unable to sleep later. Usually, I don’t know who I’m praying for. But here was this kid, on the table. Three feet away. Lucky for her the oven pooped out. Lucky, or something better than lucky.

While I was herding and praying, I saw a homeless guy I talk to on occasion. I say “homeless” because that was what I had suspected. I hadn’t really known. He’s a thin guy who often shows up wearing fatigues. He has a lady friend who sometimes appears with him.

The first time I met him, he was standing in the parking lot, trying to get people’s attention. I pulled over and rolled down the window, and we talked for a minute, and I gave him some assistance. You can’t turn someone down while you’re driving out of the parking lot after church. He appeared to be what is known as a street person. That gave me something to pray about on the way home.

I thought maybe he was someone who showed up at church on rare occasions to ask for favors, but he turned up again not long after that, in a TV audience at the TBN studio. My pastor was hosting Praise the Lord, so I decided to drive to Hollywood and check it out, and there the guy was. So he does go to church when he’s not after anything.

A few nights back, I saw him again, standing in front of the Wal-Mart across the street from the church. I was there to get olive oil and other pizza supplies. He did not look good. I wondered if he was on something. I did not speak to him on the way in, and he didn’t see me. I felt like I should have talked to him, so I decided to look for him on the way out.

He was still there. He looked almost ill. I don’t know what the problem was. I can’t judge. It could be a legitimate medical thing. I asked how he was, and he said something like, “not too good.” He said he was waiting for friends to give him a ride home. He asked which was I was going. I thought I should turn that around for my own sake, so I asked where he needed to go. He said he needed to go to Opa-Locka, which was out of my way. I said I was going south. I did not want to be in Opa-Locka after dark with a guy with this kind of troubles. I didn’t drive him, but I gave him a little help getting home.

Today I saw him leaving the church while we helped the EMTs, and I felt like I should say something, but he and his girlfriend drifted out with the crowd. I thought that was the end of it. I was glad to see him in church, after the way he had looked in front of Wal-Mart.

I went with a pastor and an armorbearer friend while they carried off the linens the girl had lain on; she had been vomiting. We all washed our hands, and I asked my friend if we were having any post-church meetings, and he inquired via radio while I waited. This all took a while. There was no meeting.

I left the building and turned toward my car, and walking toward me, five feet away, were the guy and his girlfriend. Like someone had dropped them there from a hidden chute. Okay, this time we were going to acknowledge each other. We shook hands. Danged if he didn’t need a ride again.

I had turned him town twice in the past, so I figured this was my day. The three of us got in my truck, and off we went to Opa-Locka.

They were thrilled that someone was giving them a lift. It was as if I had bought them the truck. What was I going to do? Drive off in comfort while these people roasted in the parking lot? His girlfriend was so grateful, she gave me a CD. She’s a Christian rapper. I did not see that coming. I thought it was very nice of her to give it to me, in view of their financial outlook, and I said I would listen to it.

We got to know each other a little. When they learned I was a writer, he said he was interested in doing a Christian book. I said it was a great idea, if he had a good testimony. He said he had one. He said he had been hit by a train and nearly blinded in one eye. He didn’t get around to the Christian part, but I admit, I’m always impressed when an able-bodied person tells me he has been hit by a train.

I asked how they found Trinity. His girlfriend said she had seen the church’s big white emblem over and over, on the side of the building, and that she had wanted to check the place out, so she decided they would go. He said they couldn’t always get a ride, and that on one occasion, they had walked.

That was sobering. I would guess they live six miles from the church.

I asked if they belonged to GAP (God Answers Prayer) groups. They did not. I told them it would make them feel more at home in church, and that it would help them get more out of it. He asked when my group met. I told him it met at 8 a.m. on Saturdays. He said that was right up his alley. So now I had that to think about.

She said she was good at teaching kids to sing. I said they probably needed people to do that at Trinity.

I told them about the bus ministry a friend of mine runs. He picks people up in a van and brings them to church. I said I didn’t know if it ran in his area, but that I could find out. I don’t think it does, but I haven’t worked with the bus ministry for a while. I could be wrong. They wrote their names and number on a scrap of paper, and I kept it. He said I should let him know if I knew of any little jobs he could do. Nothing strenuous, because of his condition. I nodded. I don’t really know a lot of people who need odd jobs done, but you never know.

I let them out in front of their house and went on my way.

The first time I met this guy, I was celebrating a victory in my life. That was one reason I had gone to the TBN taping. I wanted to get out of the house and go do something unusual and related to God, and the taping presented itself to me, so I went.

Does it mean anything that he’s suddenly back? Is it a reminder that another personal victory is in the making? It has to have significance. It’s just too weird, otherwise.

I don’t know what to do. I am not an outgoing person, and that is the main reason I don’t do much hands-on charity. When you deal with people who need help, bits of them tend to stick to you. It’s not a clean business. On the other hand, I think the lost are a huge concern to God, and very few people are willing to give them the time of day. Some people sink to the bottom of life, like leaves in a teacup, and they tend to stay there, and we were sent to pull them back up. Only Christians have the means to do it. I have been very conscious of this lately. I think it probably means a lot to people like this, just to be treated with common courtesy and respect.

I am not writing about this to portray myself as a saint. I’ve done almost nothing for these people, and I am not planning to give the man a kidney any time soon. I’m just writing this to document the strange events that took place today, and my impressions of them.

Things are going to get better. God has a good future planned for me.

Opposition is Profit

Okay, so I went to all-church prayer last night. I guess our church seats 1200. I would say seventy people were there. It’s funny, but whenever you show up during the week, when something needs to be done, you see the same people over and over. Over ten thousand people consider Trinity their church. Every weekend, about 3500 attend. But when the church has a need, members of a much smaller group usually fill it. We struggle as we decide how much of ourselves to give to God, and until you reach a certain point, you tend to be a spectator.

I was a couple of minutes late because I couldn’t get on the road until almost 7:30. By the time I got there, an associate pastor was up at the front, getting things going. Music was playing. Not the hard-hitting, loud stuff they play on the weekends. Worship music. The place was very dark.

He had us kneel in various parts of the church and pray individually. I find I can kneel and pray for about two minutes. After that, I can kneel or pray; not both. So I got into a chair after a bit.

After that, we went up front and got papers with transcribed prayer requests printed on them. They listed the first names of the people who had made the requests. I write a request or two on my donation envelope every week. I wondered what my requests had looked like, to the people who prayed over them.

I went down the list of people and problems as quickly as I could, trying to get to everyone giving anyone less than a good effort. There were praise reports at the bottom. People got healed and so on.

A few names and problems stuck in my mind. S. was in rehab in North Miami Beach; he even listed the room. M. had a lump in her breast. C. needed help with her mental health. These people had serious problems man could not fix. Prayer was their only hope. My obligation to them was a big deal. Who knows if they had anything else going for them? Maybe that week, I was it.

I realized I had fallen into selfishness lately. I had become involved in my own trivial problems and interests, and one of the costs was prayer time for other people. When you help other people in God’s name, inevitably, you help yourself. God’s power is like electricity; it works best when it has a completed circuit to flow through. It shouldn’t just accumulate in you like charge on a capacitor plate. It should pass through you into someone else. And like electricity passing through an object, it will cause you to radiate warmth and light. This seems to be true of all God’s blessings. In my church, we are taught, “I am blessed to be a blessing.” Money, power, talent…these things benefit you most when you put them to work for others.

I had been letting that slip. Praying for these unknown people brought it back to me, so even if I did them no good at all, I was much better off for showing up. I had something valuable to take home with me.

Sometimes when I go to church, I feel God’s power and presence very powerfully, like a thick but invisible fog, and I feel his power inside me, rising up and outward from inside me. I didn’t get there by the end of the prayer list, but I did try.

After that, the pastor had us go through the church, praying in the spirit, touching the chairs. The hope was that something would linger and touch the people who sat in them this weekend.

When I got back in my seat, the power was flowing. Finally. I thought I had prayed my way through, but then I wondered…how many people had touched this chair since I left it? Cloths taken from Paul’s body drove demons out of people. Who was to say the touch of some anointed person had not affected me as I sat in the chair?

Faith started to burgeon inside me. I felt wonderful. My worries were gone. Before going to the meeting, I had felt that I was walking in faith, and I suppose that was true, but it had been getting somewhat mechanical. At the meeting, I remembered: God is really here. Ultimately, problems are illusions. The worldly approach to life is full of anxiety and frustration. Remembering all this, I knew I was back on track.

This morning I went to my weekly prayer group. A couple of the guys talked about things they needed to work on, and I realized I was in the same boat. I need to get back to the long, serious prayer and study sessions I used to put in every morning. I need to relax and remember that every situation that seems to be a defeat or a disaster is actually going to work out for my good; God is ordering my steps. I need to do some more fasting, to get rid of some lingering problems in my attitude and behavior. In other words, to rid myself of the influence of some familiar hostile entities that lead me into trouble and postpone good things God wants to do for me.

One of my friends, Dave, started talking about demonic manifestations at church. I hadn’t seen much of this. He said he had seen a good deal of it. He sits in the back, and that’s where these things tend to happen. He talked about a fourteen-year-old girl who rolled on the ground and made growling noises during a service. Then there were two young men who showed up complaining that they heard voices. They said people at other churches had told them they were crazy. The pastor prayed with them for hours, and they had two weeks of deliverance. Not sure what’s happening now, but at least they know where to turn.

When I work as an armorbearer, I tend to stand at the rear of the church. They like to keep some of us up front, but you can’t watch the crowd from up there. Now that I’ve heard Dave’s stories, I think I’m right to stay farther back. I don’t want to be watching the choir when someone is having a manifestation. Those people belong in church. They disturb services, but they can’t get help anywhere else.

I got some great feedback on the pizza effort. I didn’t realize it was affecting people much, but one of the guys said it’s making a big impact on the way people see the cafe. One of the guys came in and learned how to make pizza a couple of weeks back, and he said he had fed off my passion for the job. Another guy said he wanted to learn. It would be great to get a team put together so I won’t always be in the kitchen.

I listened to Perry Stone on the way home. He talked about a revival in which he told people to bring objects in so he could pray over them, to influence the unsaved. One lady brought a six-pack of beer. After her husband drank it, he ended up in church, and he accepted Christ. Another woman brought her husband’s cigarettes, and when he smoked them later, the taste was so bad, he had to go see the preacher who had prayed over them.

I think about things like that when I make pizza. It’s wrong to turn an object into a relic which people idolize, but God does work through objects. Jesus healed a blind man with mud.

Every week, what do I do? I anoint my hands with olive oil–Biblical symbol of the Holy Spirit’s power–and make leavened dough, which is the Biblical symbol of flesh leavened with sin. Then people buy it and eat it. Does anything go from God to me to the dough to the customers? I wonder.

A while back, a young woman came into the kitchen to thank me for making the pizza. Her face glowed. She seemed to shine like the sun. It was very odd. I realized the sensation I got from her presence was like the sensation of the presence of God; it had the same feel. I wondered what it meant. She kept thanking me, as if I had paid off her bills or saved her house from foreclosure. It was just pizza. Or was it?

When I see her now, she’s still a very nice young lady, but that glow isn’t there.

I know the Holy Spirit is in me. I have plenty of worldliness left in me, but at times I feel the Spirit drop on me like a cloudburst, for no clear reason. Can its power go from me into other people? Why not? It has happened for plenty of other Christians.

When the leader of my prayer group tried my Sicilian, he pointed at it and said, “This pizza is ANOINTED.” I think he just meant it was really good, but maybe there was more to it than that.

Maybe we benefit from being around other Christians, not just because they provide good examples, but because the Holy Spirit works in their vicinities and through their physical bodies.

Christianity is supernatural. Primarily, not collaterally. We forget that. Churches discourage the supernatural. That’s remarkable. We teach about a man who walked on water and a world ruled by a rebellious cherub. We teach about a savior who had conversations with demons. He turned water into wine. He raised the dead, including a man who had begun to rot. But somehow, we’re supposed to shun the supernatural and work things out through hard work and learning.

I don’t get it. Does the Bible say Satan can’t use the supernatural any more? If not, why should we stop using it? Does that make sense?

What good is the form of godliness, if you don’t have the power? The power isn’t a good work ethic or good study habits or strong willpower. It’s the Holy Spirit, working through us. That other stuff is on a par with salvation by works.

A Christian who thinks he can make himself holy and righteous without the Holy Spirit is like a tree that thinks it can turn itself into a chair.

I’m not sure what’s going on. I have inklings and hunches. I’m sure I’m headed in the right direction, and that I’ll get where I’m going. It’s not my location that counts. It’s my course.

My Preoccupations

I trammed my mill the other day. I had to. I knocked it out of tram while using a fly cutter. Guess what? It turns out you have to lock the spindle when you do that. Otherwise the fly cutter can sink into the work, and suddenly instead of ten thousandths, you’re trying to trim off a quarter of an inch, and the mill doesn’t like it.

I can’t be expected to remember these tiny insignificant details.

I trammed the mill using my cheap CDCO coax indicator. Seems to work fine. I also used it to align the vise. I just milled the side of a piece of aluminum using a 1/2″ carbide cutter, and the result was gorgeous.

I was going to use a fly-cutter to test the tramming, but then I remembered how I got where I was. I believe I’ll save that for finishing the part.

The part I was making for my Saiga 12 has to be completed, and the mill was so out of tram, I could not get a good finish. Now that’s fixed.

I have been discouraged from using carbide, but now that I’m using the tables instead of guessing at feeds and speeds, I find carbide pretty exciting. I can mill 1018 steel (of which I have maybe a hundred pounds) at 1000 RPM. That sure beats HSS. Anything that gets you out of the garage in half the time is good. I don’t know for sure, because I’m too lazy to find out, but I’ll bet a regular carbide end mill will rough steel faster than an HSS roughing bit.

I had to quit working in the garage because my bread had risen. I must be honest. I do not have great hopes for this “loaf.” But satisfying my idle curiosity is a vital priority, so here I am, waiting for the oven to beep.

The part I’m making is a replacement for a Magnolia Armory ISA. This is a doodad that fits in the rear of a Saiga weapon and lets you attach a manly buttstock. The one I got from Magnolia doesn’t really fit. It’s probably intended for Saiga rifles. It’s aluminum. I could have made the new one from aluminum, but here I am with all this steel, and if I make it from steel, it will last for eternity. So I’m putting up with the slower speeds.

I can’t do the tapping, unfortunately. I don’t have fine-thread taps. At least I don’t think I do. I’ll check, but it sure looks like the screws I’m using have finer threads than the ones my taps make. Guess I’ll need to pick a couple of taps up.

I have no way of bluing the part, other than Super Blue. I should look into that. If I had used aluminum, I’d have no way at all. I’d have to order something from Brownell’s.

It’s pretty cool to have concerns like these. Three years ago, I had no Saiga, no mill, no drill press, no lathe, and few clues.

I hope I can pull this off on the first try, although I’m already wishing I had gone for a folding design instead.

More

The bread worked fine, but I think it was actually TOO kneaded. The texture was very tight. I think next time I’ll mix it in a bowl.

Loafer’s Loaf

I decided I had to do something stupid. What a novel experience for me.

I’ve been making pizza without kneading the dough. Today I decided to see what happens when I turn the dough into bread. I took a portion of Golden Tiger flour mixed with salt and pepper, blended yeast and water into it, rolled it into a wad, and plopped it on a sheet of nonstick foil.

If it rises, I plan to bake it. If not, bird toy.

Wudan Pizzeria

Even though last night’s pizza session at church did not work out all that well, it was highly rewarding. First of all, people came up to me when they saw me in the building and asked if I was making pizza, and after I got to work, people came into the kitchen to tell me how great it was. That’s always enjoyable. But on top of that, I learned new stuff about pizza.

I usually use the low setting on the convection oven fan, because I’ve been told higher speed means burned cheese. But last night I decided I wanted the crust cooked more, so I used a trick I came up with on my own. I put the fan on high and added olive oil to the mozzarella to prevent it from burning.

I can’t be totally sure, because the ovens acted strangely last night, but it looks like the trick worked beautifully. I plan to do it with all of my cheese Sicilians from here on out. I think butter would be better, because butter brings out the flavor of food and makes flavors mingle. Olive oil can’t do that. Most fats don’t. Chicken fat seems to do it.

I don’t know why people rave about olive oil. It’s nearly flavorless, except for the taste of olives, which isn’t really that exciting. I could eat butter with a spoon, because it tastes so good. Olive oil? No way. I believe the exaggerated response to the very mild and uninteresting flavor of olive oil is an example of herdthink. Chefs say olive oil tastes great, so people who listen to chefs say it tastes great. It’s the same phenomenon that makes people scream with excitement when Emeril uses a pepper shaker.

If the taste of olives is such a thrill, why don’t people stuff themselves with olives all day?

It’s great to be able to make pizza, and it’s even greater to have a bag of tricks I can rely on when I need a certain effect. Professional cooks all over the US tremble when their cheese suppliers vary the fat of their mozzarella, but I can take a wide range of cheeses and make excellent pizza.

You can’t tell the professionals or advanced hobbyists anything. If their pals or heroes didn’t come up with it, it can’t be right.

It amazes me how they overcomplicate pizza. They tell me I have to ferment the dough over a period of days, and that home-oven pizza is a compromise. They use complex calculations to create dough recipes. One guy suggested I use a scale that works in 0.1-gram increments. One portion of pizza dough weighs roughly 5,000 times that much. Do I really need to know whether the oregano amounts to one hundred seven or one hundred eight five-thousandths of the total mass?

Here’s how I make pizza. I mix tap water and yeast, in a fairly loose ratio. I mix non-kosher salt, flour, and pepper, equally imprecisely. The flour is any flour I feel like using, including all-purpose. I mix the water and yeast into the dry ingredients, poking the dough with my finger until it feels right. I let the dough rise until I feel like getting up from in front of the TV, which could be half an hour or two hours. I mash the dough into an oiled pan. I repeat the TV proofing period. Actually, I don’t watch much TV, so I may be at the PC or in the garage, butchering metalworking projects.

I add sauce that contains no crushed or whole tomatoes and no fresh ingredients of any kind. I add cheese from Costco and Gordon Food Service. I bake the pizza at 550 in a crummy GE oven. I flop it out onto a stone and let the bottom of the crust bake until it looks brown.

Then I eat. It’s perfect every time. Best pizza I know of.

No ten-day fermentation, no rocket-fuel-powered oven, no flour sold only by Tiffany’s. I don’t use micrometers, pyrometers, microtomes, electron microscopes, precision scales, hygrometers…nothing. The only time I measure precisely is at church, when I need fast repeatability and complete consistency, and I need to be able to scale things up and down.

I’m not saying their way doesn’t work, but I can’t see my incentive for trying it. The long fermentations, maybe, but other than that, it seems like a lot of bother to go from 98%-perfect pizza to 99%-perfect.

My way: I can have the best pizza imaginable, 90 minutes from now, starting from scratch.

Their way: I can have pizza on Saturday, if I get started today. I have to plan pizza the way I’d plan a weekend trip. What if Saturday comes and I want Chinese?

You can see why I’m not motivated.

I think the problem is that it’s so hard to get pizza right the first time, most people live in terror after that, fearing they’ll lose the secret. I know that fear. But I got over it through practice. The hundredth time you make pizza, you should be able to leave the scale and the hydrometer in the cupboard.

Some people insist on using kosher salt, in a dissolved form! How nutty is that? Kosher salt is identical to regular salt, except that it’s much harder to dissolve, and it costs more. Kosher sodium is just like non-kosher sodium. There is no specialized periodic table just for Jews. I don’t even worry about iodized versus non-iodized. Microscopic amounts of potassium iodide are impossible to taste, and even if they were not, I like the taste of iodine. It’s one of the reasons Scotch tastes good.

Pizza nuts like to talk about “authentic” pizza, dating back to the strange, unappetizing Italian product known as pizza margherita. What they fail to remember is that the people who invented and perfected pizza didn’t own bizarre modern equipment. They did what I do. They slopped it together using, at best, measuring cups and spoons. That’s authentic. Making your pizza at Livermore Labs is not.

Cooking is like painting. The greats don’t do it by the numbers. You have to loosen up and quit being afraid of the food. Precision should serve you; you shouldn’t serve precision.

Mike never measures anything, and his pizza is great. There is absolutely no hope that he’ll ever be able to pass on a recipe, but the food is top-notch.

Anyway, next time I make pizza, it’s going to be better than the last time. I’m glad the church gave me the opportunity to expand my skill set.

This is Like Washing Q-Tips and Re-using Them

Today’s exciting food experiment: cheese dicing.

My church has no slicer. When I told them they could get a good used one for $200-$300, it seemed like they were about to go for it. Then they decided they wanted a new one. Those run $2100. So instead of having a used slicer we can put to work, we are looking forward to having a new slicer at some far-off point in the future.

The problem with having no slicer is that we have to pay for sliced and shredded cheese, which is more expensive and somewhat less tasty than loaf cheese. GFS charges $4.00 per pound for sliced provolone and $2.85 for loaf provolone. I don’t know if Costco charges different prices for sliced and shredded mozzarella.

Yesterday I decided to buy a loaf of provolone and dice it with a cleaver, while running a timer. It turns out it takes 20 minutes to dice a six-pound loaf of cheese. In case you wondered. That includes bagging and cleanup.

Slicing would take three minutes, I’m guessing. You could slice two months’ worth of cheese in hour or two and only have to clean the slicer once.

I suppose that as a dedicated Servant Leader (our church likes this term better than “volunteer”), I could buy cheese once a week and spend an hour and a half dicing and bagging it at home. There is no way I can do this at church, while dealing with pizza demands.

Given the huge cost difference between new and used slicers, I think we should go used. If we burn through ten slicers in five years, we’ll have spent the cost of one new one. And we won’t burn through them that fast unless we buy lame brands. In the meantime, the savings would pay for a new (used) slicer about every 600 pies, or once every 5 months. Faster, if we start using sliced toppings.

A new slicer would take four years to pay for itself, but it would last thirty years.

Here’s what I’m thinking. We’re going to continue buying sliced cheese until something gives.

I bought Bouncer flour at GFS. It comes in smaller bags than Golden Tiger, it’s slightly cheaper, and pizza chefs like it. I doubt I’ll be able to tell the difference. The nearest GFS sells Bouncer, Golden Tiger, All Trumps, and Primo Gusto. Rumor has it that Bouncer and Primo Gusto (the house brand at GFS) are the same thing.

I have to be at church at 4:30 today to get ready for tonight’s service. I have to sell at least 20 pies. It’s my mission in life at this point.