You’ll Never Guess

PIZZA!

It’s on my mind again today. Yesterday I bought 8 quarter-sheet baking pans at Gordon Food Supply, and today I have to season them with olive oil and lard.

I was trying to decide how many pans we needed, and I was afraid they’d cheap out, so I bought enough to give us a total of ten. If they choke when they see the receipt, I’ll chip in. I don’t care. It has to be done.

When I make a Sicilian, I let the dough sit in the pan for a minimum of 15 minutes. Longer is better. Half an hour is about right, unless you can wait an hour for the loftiest pizza in the universe.

It takes six minutes to bake a pie. That means the turnover time for a pan is about 40 minutes. I can realistically cope with two pies at once, tops. That means I can bake something like two pies every eight minutes, so my pans will last around 40 minutes, and after that, I have to recycle. If I have ten pans, I can refill them as I go, and the circle of production should be sort of close to seamless.

If I used half-sheet pans, life would be simpler, but the big pies are more treacherous to handle, and I don’t want any extra challenges right now. When I’m ready to move up, the seventy dollars we spent on the smaller pans won’t really matter.

The seasoning works better than Teflon. Not even a close call. It’s like a layer of hard wax with oil on top. The dough has nothing to hold onto. But you have to get a few layers onto the pans before it will work.

I store my pans inside my refrigerated prep table, because I know if I don’t, some “helpful” person will come in and clean them for Jesus. It will happen, if there is any way possible. That’s human nature.

As noted previously, I just found a pizzeria for sale for $33,000, in a dynamite location. I know why it went out of business. It’s about two blocks from Steve’s, which is a pretty good pizzeria in North Miami. People rave about Steve’s because they don’t know any better. I give it a B+, which is a very good grade for Miami. They don’t scare me, however.

The place that closed is called Keystone Pizza, which is funny, because people refer to Jesus as the keystone. It’s not funny that they closed. That has to be heartbreaking for the owners. But I didn’t really mean “funny.” I meant “weird.”

Mike is eating his liver. I told him about this place. He says he has to stay in DC for another year and a half (or until the ice melts), because his son is dug in there. I don’t see why this matters. Once a week, you Fedex the boy a box of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and you give him an allowance to pay for laundry. Problem solved. But Mike can be very obstinate, even when presented with a brilliant solution like this.

Today I have to get out in the garage and fabricate something to move pizzas with. My small peel won’t be here until next week. This might be a good excuse to weld, although the end product would be more like a weapon than a pizza peel. I guess I could go to the hardware store and pick up a small sheet of aluminum. I may have a piece of steel somewhere.

I can’t wait to see how things go on Sunday. We’re only going to produce 40 slices, which is what I would call super-cautious, but it’s better to sell out than end up with an embarrassing surplus. Always leave them wanting more.

It’s nice to have something this important to work on.

Propheting Ain’t Easy

In my last post, I failed to point out that I made the test pizza at my church, not here. I had to go talk to a Sysco guy who grew up in Queens. He approved of my pizza.

I do not claim to be a prophet. I am not one of these people who run around saying, “God told me [insert self-serving claim here]” or “God said I should [insert preexisting self-serving intention here].” I think God moves me to do things from time to time, and I think he gives me little nudges about what I should pray for, but I am not crazy enough to claim I’m always sure.

A few months back, I had a weird urge to pray for God to let me give a really big sum of money to my church, to get rid of the mortgage. Maybe it was God. Maybe it wasn’t. I figured it couldn’t hurt to ask for it and then move on.

Today I was thinking about the pizza situation, and I realized I may have something to give the church which is worth a gigantic pile of cash. I might be able to put them in the pizza business.

I don’t know anything about nonprofit law. I assume it’s okay for a nonprofit to make money, if it uses the money to fund its activities. Otherwise, it would be pretty hard for a church to run a gift shop.

If I can draw a customer base, maybe we can get serious. Don’t the Moonies own Worldnet Daily and Kahr Arms?

This would be perfect. I’d love to sell pizza, but I don’t want to do it alone, because I’m not exactly sure how a sole proprietor starts running a multi-employee business from a dead start. And I don’t want to partner with non-Christians.

I’m not worried about the money part. Right now, I can buy a pizzeria in an amazing location for $33,000. But the church already has a kitchen.

I thought I should document the whole thing now. If it amounts to nothing, no harm done. It has never surprised anyone when one of my schemes turned out to be pointless. But if it’s real, I don’t want to be one of these guys who has a testimony he can’t prove. I don’t want to show up three years from now, after the fact, and say, “By the way, God showed me all these signs BEFORE I got it going.” No one believes a prognosticator who only speaks after his predictions have come true.

I am tired of preachers coming to my church and claiming extraordinary things happened to them, without providing any evidence. If God made a lady grow a leg or whatever, can’t you give us her name? Can’t you put up a Youtube, at least? Anyone can show up in church and say God flew him to Mars and back. It takes a real prophet to show up on photos at NASA.

Nutty things keep happening. My recipe gets better and better. People at church are arranging the kitchen to suit me. I got supernaturally delivered from gluttony, so I can cook all I want without exploding. It’s just weird!

Suddenly I wish I had eaten more than one slice. Oh, well. I can go have an orange.

No Need to Knead

I made Sicilian pizza without kneading the dough, and the result was a little disappointing, because as far as I can tell, it was exactly like the crust I make with a food processor. I was hoping for bigger holes. I think I actually worked it TOO MUCH, during the minute or so I mashed it with a spoon.

This is just crazy.

I highly recommend this, for anyone who doesn’t have machinery. Make the yeast and water mix, dump the flour and other stuff in a bowl, add the wet stuff, mash it around until it appears to be dough, and then bake as usual.

I think I’ll still use the food processor, because it’s actually easier. I may shorten the processing time.

I didn’t change my dough recipe. If you like to let your dough rise over a long period, cut back on the yeast.

Might be less safe for thin pizza. Caveat emptor.

Sicilian With Holes

Today The Pragmatic Chef left a comment about no-knead bread, as presented at the site Breadtopia. The basic idea is this: prepare dough by stirring the dry stuff together and adding the wet stuff, then let it sit for 18 hours, then fold it a couple of times, then let it rise, then bake.

He complained of big voids in the finished product, but for Sicilian pizza, those would be a plus, so naturally, I had to make dough.

I just mixed two cups of bread flour with yeast and my other ingredients. I used much more yeast than the Breadtopia people, because I need a product that’s ready to go in an hour or so. We’ll see what it looks like.

This could be a great thing for people without food processors or big mixers. Truthfully, it won’t save me any labor. In fact, it’s harder than using a food processor. But the big voids would be nice.

This is What Good Pizza Contains

I had a fantastic day. I drove to Bed Bath and Beyond and picked up pizza stones for the church, and then I hit Goodman’s and got a great Escali food scale and a dough hook for the church’s mixer. From there, I headed to church, and I fired up the ovens and MADE ME SOME PIZZA.

The church has a Kitchenaid K5-A mixer made by Hobart. This is one of the old ones, before they went to plastic gears. The church got it from a failed business, I think. It’s in excellent condition. I slapped the hook on it and followed Mike’s instructions. The mixer cranked out 2.5 pounds of dough without struggling, but it was annoying to use. The dough climbed up the hook and ended up turning with it instead of being kneaded.

I like adding the water to the flour, instead of doing it the other way. This allows me to adjust the water content to my liking, and it doesn’t throw dry flour all over the kitchen, which is what can happen if you try to add flour to a moving mixer. The problem with my approach (which is also Mike’s approach) is that the dough starts out hard and gets softer as you add water. Hard dough likes to form a knob around the hook. I had to cut it loose with a knife and add water and start over. And the dough process, even if you don’t screw up, takes five minutes.

This, clearly, is lame. A food processor works in a minute and a half, and there is no way the dough can stick to the blade. An added benefit is that a food processor heats the dough, so it rises fast.

I proved the Kitchenaid will work, but it’s not for me. And it would be hard to show someone else how to use it.

Anyway, I made dough, and I waited for the ovens to heat, and then I made some pies. I had taken my pans home for additional seasoning, and boy, did it work. The Sicilian I made didn’t even try to stick. Beautiful. I need a small peel to get it from the pan to the stone, but things worked out.

I texted Pastor Rich, who didn’t get a single slice yesterday. He was in the kitchen before anyone else today. He wasn’t going to be done dirty a second time. He invited a few other people, and the pie was divided, and it was perfect. I had a slice for QC purposes, so I know. It was amazing. I was so glad. I wanted the church to have the best, and they had it.

I tried the hacked conventional gas oven with the new 575-degree thermostat. I had thought it was 550, but it turned out there was a graduation past that, and then there is one that just says “BROIL.” I made a thin pizza in it, and it didn’t seem to brown the crust as fast as my home oven, but the end result was beautiful. The crust baked up harder on the outside, which would seem to suggest the temperature was higher. It was actually a little better than the pies I’ve made at home. I don’t know whether it was the new stone, higher heat, or the mixer, but I have no worries about the oven’s capabilities now.

Both pizzas got raves. The church’s lawyer showed up, and he tried them. He’s an Italian from New York, and he said it was like the pizza up north. You can’t beat that testimony. Earlier in the day, Pastor Marcus, the guy who runs the kitchen, told a volunteer I made Sicilian better than they made it in New York, and he should know, since he grew up there. He said he would bet the volunteer $20 my pizza would be the best he ever ate. That felt pretty good. People were generally freaked out by the food.

The things that happened while I was making the pizzas were amazing. I felt like I was watching God prepare my path. Pastor Marcus and a volunteer came in, moved a crowded stack of shelves away from the left side of my refrigerated prep table, and put a stainless steel table there. I cleaned it off with Pine Sol and bleach, and I was ready to go. I stuck the mixer, my seasonings and oil, and the scale on it, and I was in business! It was beautiful. Twenty square feet of workspace. I told them I was going to put a mattress on it and stay there.

They’re going to put locks on the prep table so I can keep people out of my pizza junk and my stash of beverages. BAH HA HA HA HA. I OWN THE KITCHEN.

Perhaps I exaggerate.

I called Mike while I was working, and I could feel the waves of envy radiating from my cell phone. He says I’m not allowed to make garlic rolls until he can get here.

Is this what God’s favor is like? I sure hope so. The success I’ve had has been inexplicable. If I had been born with a gift for baking pizza, I would not have suffered years of failure. These recipes were handed to me, like Samson’s strength. Maybe I should stop cutting my hair.

I’ve decided I don’t mind having things handed to me. Pride is okay, but this is better. I felt like I was surfing God’s pipeline. It was bliss. I’ve been cursed, and I’ve been blessed, and blessed is better.

When Pastor Rich tried the pizza, he almost immediately cleared the expenditure for a food processor, so we’ll be getting a giant Kitchenaid Pro Line job. After that, I will be Godzilla, and pizza will be Japan. I’ll be able to crank out enough dough for two Sicilians every three minutes.

This is beautiful. I told Pastor Rich I’d rather be the guy in the kitchen, making the pizza, than the guys on the stage, singing and getting all the attention. I’m thrilled to be doing this.

He seems to think I’m nuts, but he is not complaining.

If I had five days a year that I enjoyed this much, I would consider myself lucky.

Note: I highly recommend the Escali 115C food scale. It weighs in tiny increments, it goes to ten pounds, and it STAYS ON FOR FOUR MINUTES so you don’t go crazy turning it on over and over.

But This is Real

It occurred to me last night that during the day, I had had a peak experience. I got to cook perfect Sicilian pizza, in church, while carrying a firearm with night sights. The guy who leads the armorbearers at my church said something about me being the deadliest cook in the city.

I hope he was talking about my shooting and not the food.

I haven’t figured out how to work tools into the equation, but it’s about forty feet from the pizza area to the church’s table saw, so I can always run back there and hug it as needed.

I called Mike to badger him and tell him about my success, which was largely due to his help (as he reminded me). I told him about my great new discovery: Glad disposable containers for dough. It won’t stick to them. He told me he had been using them for a long time. This must be how Luke Skywalker felt when Yoda used to slap him down.

It’s funny; it’s as if God has given me a number of ways to impact the church, so at least one will succeed, even if I am hindered at the rest of them. I have been delayed in my writing efforts; they don’t even use me to edit copy for their website, which is very odd, given my background. Maybe that’s the enemy working to fragment the church, or maybe it’s God, saying cooking is the right thing to be doing now.

So far, the cooking and the armorbearer work are prospering beautifully. Those are more than enough to make me happy and help me feel useful.

I’m glad they don’t ask me to do legal work. A lawyer is like David: a “man of blood,” even if what he does is right. I don’t want to go through life beating on people.

Obstacles and hindrances and wild goose chases have taken up much of my life, and I think it was because I wasn’t following God. Things that should have worked out for me did not, over and over. That’s great. If you succeed at doing something that is beneficial in the short term but ultimately harmful, you haven’t been blessed, so I’m glad I didn’t make it on my own terms. I can think of people who did. Chris Farley. Elvis. John Belushi. Nero. Hitler. They lived by bread alone, and things went poorly for them.

Satan doesn’t have to kill you to win. If he can waste enough of your time and effort, you’ll lose. It’s as good as killing you. God created you for a mission, and distraction and delay are effective ways of aborting it.

If you’re a worldly person, Satan will wave shiny prizes in front of you. Sexy women. Expensive cars. Glory. Power. Advancement. But if you pursue these things, he’ll yank them away before you get them, or he’ll give them to you, and you’ll wish he hadn’t. You’ll regret it, in this life or when you are judged.

Satan is like a drug pusher. He offers you things you want very badly, and he tells you they’ll make you happy. But they cause pain in the end. I think he loves to make people chase his mirages, and he loves tearing the sets down just when we think we’ve made it. I think he enjoys our despair and disappointment.

The movie Bedazzled (either version) is a great lesson for Christians. Satan shows up and makes deals with a fool, and then Satan finds cruel ways to break the deals in spirit while upholding them in letter. That’s what my life used to be like, except that he often failed to stick to his deals in any respect. He can do that.

These days, things work. I want better things, and they are coming to me, on a sustainable, healthy schedule. I will suffer in this life, but overall, I will live in victory and contentment.

I became a Spirit-filled Christian around twenty-five years ago. Then I backed away because I was offended. Since then, I’ve never fit into the world. I’ve been excluded and blackballed, over and over. When I’ve tried to shoehorn myself into the worldly scene, things haven’t felt right. There has always been tension between worldly people and me. I could only follow them so far. They could only get so close to me. Then the barriers went up.

Now I know people I can relax with. People I can work with. That’s a new experience for me. More accurately, it’s an experience I haven’t had since I left the church. If I meet a woman I like, I won’t have to worry about her telling people she thinks I’m gay because I didn’t jump on her when she removed her underwear under the table at a bar. I won’t have awkward social moments when I have to turn down drugs. If I decide to do the godly thing instead of the obvious thing, at a considerable short-term cost, I won’t have to fight with people who don’t get it. If I marry and my wife gets a dubious amniocentesis result, I won’t have to explain why I don’t want to kill the baby. I’ll never face a paternity suit. I won’t have a business partner who insists I work on Sunday or withhold my tithes and offerings. My friends will improve me instead of pulling me down. It’s shocking, how much power you can get from friends who build you up instead of holding you back. A lot of wives should think about that, when they deal with their husbands. A lot of parents should think about it when they deal with their kids.

This is freedom. It’s oppressive to be chained to unbelievers. We’re supposed to lead, and when we’re shackled to worldly people, they lead us. And guess who leads them? The Church Lady could tell you. The chain of command is supposed to go God-pastor-congregant and then on down to Satan, at the very bottom. When you have to follow a worldly person, God can end up at the bottom, with Satan at the top. Then you lose the blessings God intends you to walk into through obedience and faith.

One of the things that makes the biggest impression me is my interaction with Christian women. They are a breath of fresh air. I was so tired of sleaze. I was tired of being told I was obligated to “make a move” by a certain time or lose the woman. It’s bizarre for a man to find himself in situations where he’s the one who has to apply the moral brakes. Women are supposed to carry a lot of that burden; God wired their brains and set up their hormones so they would be suited to do it. Instead, they’re downright coarse. “Ladettes” are everywhere. They’re the norm.

You know what? There is nothing wrong with a man who hasn’t gotten your pants off by the third date. If that’s the only way you can tell you have a strong relationship with a man, you are very, very lost. If sex is that important to you, hire an escort so you’ll only waste a man’s time for an evening, instead of a lifetime. Why should I have to fight preexisting background temptation, as well as the woman I’m with? If she’s not on my side in this battle, why should I expect her to be on my side in any other fight? Support is a wife’s primary function, whether the feminists want to hear it or not. A man can’t fight the world by day and his wife by night and expect to do well.

Life has gotten so sordid; it’s sad that women have become one of the chief mechanisms of the change. Worldly women have given up. Many of them are like the hairnetted ladies you see in grocery stores, calling out to strangers to get them to try free samples of their products. Wow, that’s an inspiring way to live. That’s dignity.

I’m sure there are Christian women who are too weak to do what they believe in, but there are also women who have enough backbone to put love before sex. What do you want? A husband, or a good, reliable goat? It’s easy to whine that all the other women are coming across with the goods. That’s fine, if you think you don’t deserve anything better than the bad results most women get.

I’ve said it before: I used to find worthwhile women hard to locate, and I found it hard to motivate myself to ask anyone out, but now the more likely problem is trying to figure out which worthwhile woman is the right one. I meet great women when I’m among Christians. Aaron said it best: “fish in stocked ponds.”

Life is cleaner and more focused now. I’m glad I don’t have to think about designated drivers any more. I don’t have to go without my carry piece in order to enter a bar legally. I don’t even smell like cigars. I go to bed early, and I rise early. It’s a good way to live. My character is improving; I disappoint and annoy myself less. The things I gave up to get here are garbage. Paul said the same thing.

God did all of it. He worked inside me and changed my desires and strengths. It’s the best deal imaginable. You don’t have to be strong or pure to get this; God will clean you up over time and make you what you should be. You don’t have to deserve it.

I’m going to work on the Sicilian pans and get some pizza stones today. I am going to wake this church up with my cooking on Sunday, or they are going to find me on the kitchen floor, passed out from trying.

God’s Own Pizza

I am back from the pizza experiment!

I would say it was a success, but that would be like saying Barack Obama is conceited and incompetent. It’s an understatement, by several orders of magnitude.

It turns out a commercial convection oven will make outstanding Sicilian pizza. I think it’s better than a home oven. You have to shorten the cooking time, but other than that, it’s swell. And it has about eight racks, so I could conceivably bake eight pizzas at once; two per rack, with stones on the racks between them.

As for flat pizza, I don’t recommend a convection oven. The crust was like Papa John’s, so by my standards, it was FAIL. Everyone who tried it thought it was great, but why not have the best?

When people sampled the pies, there was all sorts of moaning. I have to admit, that was fun. I have no other means of making women make those sounds.

I know all you atheists think I’m ignorant and superstitious. I would never dream of contradicting you. I will just point out that the amazing “coincidences” continued to mount today.

While I was waiting for dough to rise, I met an older gentleman in the church’s workshop, which is…RIGHT BEHIND THE KITCHEN. The walk-in boxes are actually in the workshop. He turned out the be the pastor’s uncle. Guess what he does? WOODWORKING. He showed me a bunch of beautiful cabinets he had made. We talked table saws. Then he said he used to teach ELECTRONICS, which is another thing I love to fool with. And he used to have an RV with a CUMMINS DIESEL, so we got to talk about my recenty acquired truck! Let’s see. They’re letting me cook. I made a friend who turned out to be a jazz fan and horn player. And now I have a friend who loves tools!

But it’s all superstition, right? Nothing to see here. Move along.

One of the church’s volunteers is an appliance repairman who COINCIDENTALLY happens to maintain ovens for a bunch of the local pizzerias. No, nothing out of the ordinary there. Happenstance! He was working on the conventional and convection ovens I was going to be using. He heard me say I was worried about the ovens only going to 500°, and that I really wanted 550°.

Long story short: the convection oven worked beautifully at 500°, but the thermostat on the other oven was bad. He left and got a new one and put it in. He showed it to me. It was a 550° thermostat! He had heard me talking, so he replaced the old busted thermostat with a hotter one! Now I have a convection oven and a conventional oven, to do everything I want!

All luck. I assure you.

They gave me a little space where I could work. It was a refrigerated cabinet with a granite counter. They picked it up used. It’s a PIZZA PREP TABLE. Three feet from the ovens I’ll be using. Ten feet from the corner, around which are the woodworking tools.

The sub-pastor I’m working with–Pastor Marcus–told me I could put my own lock on the cabinet and put my supplies in it! It’s empty!

“So what?”, I hear determined atheists saying. Right, it’s all imaginary.

BUT…I’m also part of the armorbearers group, which means I help with church security. One of our big problems is that we need to have water available, because we walk around all day and get dehydrated. The church wasn’t providing a solution. This was especially important to me, because I had a kidney stone a while back.

Okay, GUESS WHERE I’M GOING TO KEEP MY WATER NOW? In my locked pizza cabinet! I won’t have to worry about people grabbing it! I can make room for water for the other guys, too.

Man, it’s amazing how much divine action you can perceive, when you’re a primitive theist determined to see the hand of God in everything that happens. In order to be an atheist, I’d have to be as hard-headed as the Black Knight.

John, the guy who leads the armorbearers came in to try the pizza. He said it was “anointed.” I told Pastor Marcus I’d have to ask John if I could take time off from the armorbearers to work on Sunday. He yelled across the room at John, who wasn’t fully able to respond because he still had his mouth full. The message: “Just take him.” He packed up the rest of the third pie and took it home.

This is just crazy. The best pizza in Miami will now be available only at Trinity Church.

I still have stuff to do. I have to pick up some stones for their ovens. Maybe a dough hook for their mixer. I’d like to see them spring for a Kitchenaid food processor. I think I would enjoy seeing one of those arrive more than Moses liked watching the Egyptians drown. Three hundred bucks…it’s doable.

Here’s a tip: I used Glad disposable food containers to hold the rising dough today, and guess what? They’re ideal. The dough just won’t stick to them. Hey, what wonderful LUCK.

I’m sure glad I’m not smart enough to be an atheist. Look all the blessings I wouldn’t be imagining.

View Only Through Smoked Glass

I’m headed to church to do pizza research! I’ll make dough here and take it up there. Their mixer may or may not have a dough hook, and I don’t want to get up there and find out I can’t make dough.

Pray for success. I’m hoping I can give them a product that will knock them out.

Hiatus

I was going to shoot up to my church today to see if I could make pizza with their equipment, but I forgot about our 40-day thing. During the first 40 days of the year, people are doing various things to get closer to God. Most of it is fasting. I’m doing a pretty wimpy variation: Mondays until 6 p.m. If I bake pizzas, I won’t be able to try them until this evening. That won’t work.

I suppose this will work out well, because I need a dough hook for the church’s mixer. Maybe I can find one today.

Here’s my take on the Super Bowl: glad it’s over. On Saturday night, the traffic was unbelievable. Just what Miami needs more of. The Super Bowl is like Hip Hop Weekend. A good reason to stock up on food and stay indoors.

On Saturday night, I saw thousands of cars trying to get to downtown Miami. I can’t figure that out. There must have been an event. Ordinarily, there is no rational explanation for trying to go downtown. There is nothing there, except bums. We have a contrived waterfront mall called Bayside Marketplace, but it’s about as authentic as the Country Bear Jamboree and nearly as exciting as Walmart.

I have to wonder if clueless people went to downtown Miami, assuming it had to be the focal point of a huge celebration, only to discover nothing was happening. And that there was no place to park.

People have a lot of misconceptions about Miami. I’ll help.

1. When you reach the Florida border, you’re almost there. Wrong. You have about 400 miles to go.

2. Miami has great nightlife. Wrong. Miami BEACH has great nightlife. Miami is a different city, several miles from Miami Beach. Miami smells like wino pee, and there isn’t much to do there at night unless you like Denny’s or emergency rooms. There used to be some nightlife in Coconut Grove, but the Beach pretty much killed it. Even the gays left. We still have a Hooters, though.

3. Miami has great beaches. Wrong. Miami BEACH has OKAY beaches. Miami is not on the ocean. It’s on Biscayne Bay. All of the waterfront land is covered by buildings, seawalls, and mangroves. The really good beaches are about a hundred miles away, on the west coast. And Eleuthera’s beaches make our west coast beaches look like landfills.

4. Miami is beautiful. Well, maybe, compared to the place you came from. But Miami is almost completely flat, the coastline is boring and straight, and the beaches, as noted above, are very ordinary. Because of the geography, you won’t see much of the ocean, anyway, unless you’re driving across a bridge or paying a thousand dollars to experience our very average offshore fishing.

5. People who live in Miami will be glad to see you, because you’re contributing to the economy.

Oh, boy. I won’t even touch that one.

I could not care less about the game. I’m glad I wasn’t required to watch it. The older I get, the more unpleasant TV football games are for me. I grit my teeth until they’re over. The crowd noise is like coarse sandpaper on the eardrums. I’ve tried to like football, but it’s like pretending to enjoy Kenny G. to please your girlfriend. The only things I like about football are barbecuing and the funny commercials.

I am told people paid $5000 each for seats yesterday. I must not be the same species as those people. I’m sitting here trying to imagine what, about Super Bowl whatever-number-it-was, would justify that kind of expense, and I’m drawing a blank. Even if I wanted to go, I think fifty bucks would be a king’s ransom. I went to see B.B. King once, and I think I was in the fifteenth row, and I believe I paid thirty dollars. Something like that. I paid $25 to see Maynard Ferguson in a small club, and he came out in the crowd and shook my hand. If you’ve ever spent more than a hundred bucks on a sporting event, your brain needs an MRI.

I have never cared who won a football game. Why should I? It’s not like I know these people. I found out the Colts and Saints were playing the day before the game. Who was I rooting for? Tim Tebow. Although I wouldn’t know who he is, if he weren’t making hippies mad. I enjoyed his commercial. I saw it a few minutes ago. On a blog.

Apparently the Colts aren’t in Baltimore now.

I need to call the church and find out the model number on their old Hobart Kitchenaid. I have this nagging feeling that I’ll have to examine it in person.

Maybe God will provide a Cuisinart.

By the way, Kitchenaid makes a 16-cup food processor that is supposed to be much better than a Cuisinart, and it’s not that expensive. Something to think about. If your machine can handle four cups of flour, as this one should, your pizza needs will be no problem.

New Sensation for Me

I had a spiffy time at church today. I am finally starting to blend in. Every so often, I realize it’s a little weird for white Southern lawyer to be part of the cast of characters at a church comprised mostly of Haitians, Jamaicans, and Cubans, but the sensation only lasts for a second.

I think the kookier Christians get, the more post-racial we are. Charismatics are pretty far-out. Now that I think about it, there are a bunch of interracial couples in the church, so maybe my theory holds water.

When I was in law school, there was an annoying level of tension between blacks and whites. It was really bizarre. I guess I found it strange because of my past experiences in an Assemblies of God church, where people were just people. Sometimes I treated black law students as though they were just like everyone else, and they did not welcome it. Many of them separated themselves from the rest of us. Crazy, given that this was in the late 90s.

I’m part of the church’s “armorbearer” team, which is a group of men who do everything from basic security to getting the pastor his Altoids. We had a swell meeting after the service. We’re really coming together. We’re getting our firearms policy straight, and we’re taking steps to get professional security training so we don’t screw up too much. It’s a wonderful club to be in. These guys get it done; that’s what they’re all about. We don’t get to hop up and down on the stage or star in the church’s videos. We just wander around behind the scenes, trying to make stuff work. The people in the more glamorous jobs have their own problems to contend with, so we try to make life easier for them.

There are other volunteer branches in the church that keep things moving. The parking guys. The ushers. The kitchen people. If I try to make a list, I’ll leave half of the volunteers out.

I finally got to root around in the kitchen and make pizza plans. If I can work it out, I plan to go up there tomorrow and try to make a few pies with their equipment. This is just R&D. I have a feeling it won’t be hard to find test pilots.

Their ovens only go to 500°, which is troubling. I’ll have to see if it causes a problem. My guess is that it won’t. I would think thick pizza would actually benefit from a lower temperature.

They have a weird commercial convection oven which could conceivably bake several big pies at once, and they have a traditional gas oven. I’ll just have to see what works.

I think the best approach is to sell slices. This place is not efficient, and to sell whole pies, you need to move fast. And you need to have lots of trays and screens and containers for dough. That would be a pain. And most of our customers won’t want a whole pie anyway.

I want to train the customers to like Sicilian. It’s less messy, and you get much more food for the effort and time. You can cut one pie into eight slices, and every slice is a meal. Except for the gluttons. A 16″ circular pie will only serve four, assuming you cut it in eight slices.

I’m really excited. I’m happy to volunteer in any area, but it’s nice to do something I’m actually gifted at.

It turns out there is a Gordon Food Service four miles north of the church, and there’s a Costco not far off. That means I can get everything I need, nearby. We may be able to get quality stuff delivered by Sysco, but we’re not there yet.

I picked up some starter items. Cutter. Cookie sheet. Tray. Screen. Sauce. Cheese. Yeast. Vinegar. That will make getting started a lot easier. They’ll still have to get a peel and a food scale, and we have to figure out how to make dough. They have a Kitchenaid stand mixer that says “Hobart” on it, but I don’t know if they have dough attachments, and I have to figure out how to use them. A big food processor would be nice.

Light olive oil is a problem. Everyone squeals about extra virgin so much, I assumed the light stuff would be cheaper. But I haven’t found a good price on it. I’m considering mixing extra virgin with safflower oil. You really don’t want a heavy olive flavor in your pizza oil. It works fine in rolls, but extra light is perfect for pizza crust. GFS has a blend I might try. Sometimes the cheap stuff works better than the good stuff.

I sure hope this works out. It would be something for us to take pride in, and it would give people from the neighborhood a reason to walk in the door. And the cafe has been a real challenge for the church, so anything I can do to make it work will be a good thing.

Today I learned something interesting about one of the armorbearer guys I hang around with. He’s an accomplished musician. He plays the trombone. He used to tour and perform when he was a kid. My cousin’s husband is a classical trombone virtuoso, and this guy actually knows who he is. Can you beat that?

I can’t believe I know another person under 60 who knows who Lester Young was. Man, I feel less alone.

Another of those funny God “coincidences,” I guess.

You’ll Still Need a Tray

Thanks, any and all who assisted with prayer this morning. Things went very well.

I have nothing to do for the rest of the day. What now? If there is one thing I hate, it’s idleness.

Shut up.

Can I bore you again with my supernatural weight loss? I made pizza over and over again for a month, and depending on how accurate my scale is, I either gained no weight or a pound and a half. Because I ate tons of pizza and God made it magically nonfattening? No. I mean, I ate plenty, but I’m pretty sure my permanent increase in self-control kept it down to a harmless amount. I don’t think angels are hovering around my maw, destroying calories miraculously as food gets caught in the gravity well. Although I rule nothing out.

I love pizza more than just about anything on earth, but once I got Sicilian figured out, I no longer had an overpowering urge to make it. That is completely bizarre. I never got tired of pizza in the past. I ate it every day for long periods. I had no problem with eating it twice a day.

As long as I had sauce, cheese, and flour, I had to make pizza until the supplies ran out or my arches collapsed. But I’m sitting here right now with no idea what I’m going to have for lunch, and I have delicious Costco cheese and two kinds of sauce handy, and the only thing I’m sure of is that I’m going to have something boring and healthy. This is like a crackhead turning down rocks in favor of Sanka.

I wonder if I’ll ever be able to help anyone else get what I got. Nobody cares. When I talk to people about it, they start telling me all their diet secrets. That’s a completely different subject. No relevance at all. I’m not on a diet. I have diet secrets, too, but they don’t work. This is a different thing. I just eat less. No one understands. God just dropped it on me. I don’t even know why. I hope he shoves a few more presents off the back of his sleigh. Or chariot or whatever.

I’m right down here! Look me up on Google Earth. I’ll paint a big X on the driveway. Or maybe a yud.

Imagine Moses talking to someone about parting the Red Sea. The other guy would say, “Yeah, you can build a caisson with lots of slave labor and spend about ten years pumping the water out,” and Moses would go, “Dude, I just waved a stick.”

After a few minutes, Moses would throw up his hands and say “whatever.” Or “oy.”

Sometimes I feel like I’m talking Chinese. “God fixed me so I don’t overeat!” “Yeah, I’m thinking of doing Slim-Fast.” “No, GOD FIXED ME SO I DON’T OVEREAT.” I feel like Lego Darth Vader trying to make people understand he’s not Jeff Vader or Mr. Stephens, the head of catering.

Obscure reference. See Youtube. Search under Eddie Izzard.

I have to watch that now.

Not by Sight

Pizza, pizza, pizza.

I keep thinking about it.

I have my recipes fixed up, so I no longer have to make pizza every day. I used to make it every day because I wanted to eat it. These days, it’s just puzzle drive. But my gut doesn’t know the difference, so I wanted it to end. I haven’t put on weight, but it made me nervous anyway.

I have a burning urge to buy a defunct pizzeria, but I am trying to squelch it. Do I really want to work sixty hours a week, dealing with the public? Ack. That’s not an inviting prospect. I like the idea of squashing all competitors and becoming the pizza king of the Southeast, but I would have no time for myself. No tool time. No piano. No cornet. No music theory. No writing, period. Leave that stuff for the next life, because you can’t do it here AND run a pizzeria. God gave me some natural gifts, and I would have to abandon all of them, except the ability to make good food. It would be like cutting my legs off. I’d have to say goodbye to big parts of me.

I would much rather write. I got a couple of offers to write Christian books, but the people involved have not followed through. My pastor is just too busy to work on the book he and I were doing, and the other guy–the former addict turned rehab director–just wandered off. This is one of the frustrating things about Christianity. People start things they don’t finish. Even Paul did it. He started to travel to Asia Minor to spread the gospel, and the Holy Spirit put the kibosh on it, so he had to go somewhere else.

Another frustrating thing about writing for God is that you need a divine spark. You can’t just decide to write a book. God has to be in it. He has to give you the concept. Otherwise, it’s just you, doing what you think is right, without his guidance, approval, and favor. It’s not like being a Christian air conditioner repairman or a Christian car salesman. Those people just go from deal to deal without pausing. When someone comes in and asks to look at a used Taurus, you don’t have to get down on your knees and ask if it’s God’s will that you sell a car. The founder of Chick-fil-a is a Christian. I very much doubt that he requires his employees to pray before they agree to take people’s orders.

By the way, that company proves what God can do for you, if you’re receptive. I can’t understand why anyone would eat at Chick-fil-a, but they do. The food is ridiculous. A bland fried cutlet on a damp hamburger bun. Come on. How could that work? But it did, even though they refuse to serve on Sunday.

I remember seeing my first Chick-fil-a, years ago, in a mall. I thought, “Man, those people are idiots. That will never work.”

People said the same thing about the ark. “Water from the sky? Are you crazy? That will never happen. And what do you know about naval architecture, pops? Nothing, that’s what. I’m going to go home and sacrifice goats to Baal and make fun of you.”

I’ve been reading about The Book of Eli. It’s a big hit. Guess what that means? More Christian movies in a year or so. Almost all will be bad. Almost all will be packed with wrongness. Maybe two or three genuinely anointed films will squeeze out while the window is open. Is that God’s plan? Hard to say. It’s obvious, and God specializes in subtlety and unpredictability.

I read about Gary Whitta, the screenwriter. Judging by what I read, he’s not a Christian. Or maybe he is, but he’s not hardcore. He says he doesn’t think The Book of Eli is a Christian movie. He’s a video game expert. Can you believe that? But he wrote a movie that is extremely consistent with principles of charismatic Christianity, which non-Christians and even non-charismatics know almost nothing about. A mainstream Baptist or Catholic could never have the same understanding of this movie that a charismatic can have. Even if they understood, they wouldn’t agree with it. In fact, this morning I read a review by a well-known Christian blogger, and she clearly had no idea what the movie was about. It might as well have been two hours of quantum mechanics explained in Navajo.

The non-charismatic take appears to be this: God tells a guy to preserve the Bible, and God takes care of him while he does it, but there is a lot of mean violence, and there are dirty words, and the stuff that happens is not very plausible, so why are people going to this movie? That’s way off. If you’re worried about the movie’s premises making sense, you missed the whole point. For that matter, when you watch any movie, it’s generally a bad idea to let things like that bother you. Imagine trying to enjoy Bugs Bunny with an attitude like that. “Rabbits can’t talk! I want my money back!” Forget the Wizard of Oz. Forget Star Wars.

It’s kind of dangerous to start thinking God is sending you messages no one else can see. On the other hand, he does it all the time. The psalms are full of things no one could fully understand until after the crucifixion and the events in the Upper Room. Jesus spoke parables to ordinary people, and they didn’t understand, but the disciples got the true meanings. You don’t want to become a nut who thinks his toaster is commanding him to do stuff for God, but encrypted messages have been a big part of worshiping Jehovah since the dawn of history. He gave Nebuchadnezzar dreams he couldn’t understand. He wrote an incomprehensible message on the wall in Babylon. This is just how God is. It’s part of his modus operandi.

If you think God doesn’t speak in riddles, explain Ezekiel and the Revelation to me. Good luck with that.

Yesterday I heard a message from Perry Stone. He reminded listeners that Jesus predicted that many would be offended before his return. I understand “offense” to mean anger or strong disagreement aimed at God or the church. The Book of Eli may well provoke a lot of offense. Many charismatics are thrilled, and we’re saying, “We get it.” Some non-charismatics seem upset by the violence, and they think the movie is shallow. Unbelievers are just mad all the time, whenever Christianity makes it into a movie theater; they don’t need a particular reason. People like me will say, “This is what real Christianity is like. This is what walking by faith is.” Some non-charismatics will say, “Christianity is not about hitting people with swords and talking dirty!”, because they can’t comprehend the movie, and they won’t understand what we’re saying.

We’re seeing all sorts of offense already. Satan turns good into evil, in people’s minds. The church is under heavy persecution for opposing homosexuality. Millions are offended by our defense of God’s will. Suddenly, people who believe the Bible are bigots. We’re also under attack for teaching our kids that God created us. Suddenly, real Christians are ignorant. Faith equals rejection of logic. We’re anti-knowledge! We want to break into pharmacies and destroy the antibiotics. We want to smash all the computers. Evil! Evil! Christians are a plague!

One of the most plausible premises of The Book of Eli was that after the nuclear holocaust, people burned Bibles, claiming religion had caused the war. I find that completely believable. To an unbeliever, Christianity is just as silly and evil as wahhabist Islam. That’s a classic type of offense. The ancient Romans exemplified it.

This movie will probably be a powerful vehicle for offense. It will be a sword that divides. Oh, well. God took care of the fictional Eli, and he will take care of real Christians, too. People will attack us, but if you think about it, the longest any Christian can suffer here is about a hundred years, while God’s postmortem judgment lasts forever. We’re on the sweet side of this conflict, even if that isn’t obvious at the moment.

The Cheese Doesn’t Wear the Sauce

The latest pizza experiment was a success. I succeeded in trying something and finding out it didn’t work.

Some time ago, I posted some Youtubes of northern pizza guys making Sicilian. They put the cheese under the sauce. Claimed it kept the crust from getting soggy. Tonight, I tried putting cheese directly on the crust, but I also put some over the sauce. Result: silliness.

The cheese under the sauce didn’t really cook. It melted, but I wouldn’t describe it as cooked. And it didn’t mingle well with the cheese above the sauce. There was also some structural instability which made the cheese and sauce ooze over one side of the crust.

Waste of time. Still a fine dinner, but nothing like the world-class Sicilian I made last night.

My cooking method is still perfect. Worked like a dream. And the small pizza was a good idea. Fewer calories, more crust per unit of area, and easier to handle.

Hand me the Loupe

I have to quit listening to readers.

Reader HTRN mentioned certified San Marzano tomatoes, so I had to get out and drive and buy some.

Now Mike has recommended yuppie mozzarella sitting in water, and HTRN seconded him. So of course, I had a moment of weakness and bought some.

I paid $3.29. Not so bad, right? Wait. The label…can that be right? It says “1 3/4 oz.”

Arrgh.

I didn’t want enough for a whole pie, but that’s insane.

I did more research on San Marzano tomatoes. If you look around on the web, you can get La Regina brand in a #10 can for between four and five bucks. Of course, you have to pay for delivery, and you have to buy a case.

Pizza nuts claim La Regina is the best. They also say that if you get Cento, you want the ones with “Italian” below the picture on the label. I was not able to find those.

There is also a tomato known as La Bella, which is a San Marzano type, grown nearby. It gets good reviews.

Inevitable

It never ends.

Tonight I’ll be making pizza for dinner.

The other day, I realized my quest for small pans was not really necessary. You can make great rectangular pizza in a pan bigger than the pie. So tonight I’m going to make a 9 x 6 pizza, which is really the perfect size for a single diner. I want to see how it comes out. It will have a slightly higher crust-to-cheese ratio than a bigger pizza.

I also want to try putting cheese directly on the dough. Some northern pizzerias do that. But I don’t want to do it their way. They put mozzarella slices on the dough and then pour sauce on them. I want to put sliced cheese on the dough, add sauce, and then apply more cheese. The idea of sauce with nothing over it seems wrong to me.

This should be a marvelous pie. The cooking technique and other details are polished to the point where I can’t do much better.

My church has everybody on a 40-day project. Some are fasting every day. Some are doing a Daniel fast. I set aside one mid-day hour for prayer every day, and every Monday, I fast until six p.m. So when dinner time comes tonight, I think I’ll be in the right frame of mind.

There are so many things you can do to pizza, beyond what I’ve done. You can add preferments (stuff fermented in advance) to the dough. You can keep the dough several days to let it age. You can buy expensive yeast. None of that seems worth messing with. I admit, sourdough would be a nice option, but other than that, I can’t imagine anything making my pizza better. It’s that good.

Most cooks like to investigate every option and go through endless ingredients. They like to consult the foodies and crib from TV. That has never interested me. If you know what you’re doing, you can take three or four ingredients, use them correctly, and make something that will drive people wild. If you can’t make a dynamite dinner for four for $20, you have no business fooling with expensive ingredients, fancy theories, and foodies. They won’t help.

This is one reason I love Cuban food and Southern food. A Cuban joint can sell the best Cuban dinner on earth for ten bucks plus tip and make a profit. The meat Southern cooks love best is so cheap, it’s almost free. There is nothing wrong with taking the fancy route when it’s justified, but most people do it not because they’re enlightened, but because they can’t compete without crutches.

What do biscuits and gravy cost? Pennies a serving. How many people can do it right? Very few. I have never had good biscuits and gravy in a restaurant, but I make them at home, over and over. In a Southern breakfast, it’s better than the vast majority of $75 meals you can buy in Miami.

I can pay 99¢ per pound for tough pork and make wonderful barbecue. I can get ham hocks for nearly nothing. When it comes to food, “good” and “expensive” and “complicated” are things that have little relationship to each other.

Food is like anything else. There are sheep who think external trappings and jargon are what count, and then there are people who actually know what they’re doing.

I have to decide whether to have Stanislaus or Cento tomatoes on the pizza. I’m almost out of Cento. I don’t think I have enough for a pie. And it’s raining.

Stanislaus!

I am so grateful for the success I’ve had. Even if I never cook professionally, it is extremely satisfying.