Woe to Thee, O Land, When Thy King is a Child

Are we finally reaching the point where gravity catches up with us and we have to admit we can’t finance the future by eating it?

The Dow is down over eighty points, and we just had two days that were even worse. Sooner or later, before we can have a real recovery, somebody somewhere has to make some money–has to create some wealth–and given our unemployment figures, that doesn’t seem to be happening. And we still have a gigantic glut of foreclosed homes the banks are sitting on. They can’t hold them forever. Eventually, they’re going to be put on the market or bulldozed. It will be interesting to see what happens to home loans and property values.

Because we borrowed an astronomical amount of money to finance the recovery, in the future, we have to make more money than usual in order to have the same prosperity we had in the past. It’s just like a student loan; you borrow money when you’re 20, and by the time you pay it off, every pizza you ate in college cost $50. What happens when you graduate with debt and then can’t get a job? That’s America’s situation.

Where is the evidence that we’re going to do better in 2015 than we did in 2005? Why would anyone think that was possible, let alone likely? And if we try to solve the problem by inflating the currency, we’ll just end up with larger numbers of smaller dollars. We’ll all be millionaires, and nobody will have a second pair of shoes. It’s still poverty, no matter how you look at it. We may be able to cheat the Chinese via inflation, but we’ll also be burning our cash reserves.

I don’t know why God provided me with silver coins, but it looks like I should be happy about it. I inherited a bunch of circulated silver coins from my grandfather. He snapped them up after Johnson turned our money into steel slugs. Seemed crazy at the time, but if we have a depression, I’ll be able to buy bread.

People think silver coins are worthless. They’re ignorant. The coins are 90% silver.

I just looked it up. My nickels are worth a dollar each. The dimes are worth over a dollar. The quarters are worth over three dollars. Wish I had enough of them to keep me alive for a year or two. Maybe I should buy some.

Gold is fine, but in a depression, it would be hard to spend. Owning gold would be like carrying thousand-dollar bills. A piece the size of a sesame seed would buy a dozen eggs. That’s useless. They don’t make coins that small. And what are you going to do, if you own it? Run a smelter in your kitchen? Forget it. Even if you could cut your gold into small pieces, no one would trust it. This is why mints exist. The purpose of a mint isn’t to make coins. It’s to make coins people can trust. Otherwise, private enterprises would be making gold coins diluted with copper and brass.

A silver coin, unlike a gold coin, will have a useful value. One of my dimes is worth a dozen eggs. Spending gold will be very difficult, but handing over a dime and grabbing a dozen eggs will be simple. Gold will only be useful if you’re buying a car or real estate. Or you’ll be able to trade it for silver, at a loss.

People say you don’t have to have precious metal in your possession in order to use it. You can trade it electronically. Good luck with that. If things get weird, I don’t want my money in the vault of some metals dealer three thousand miles away, waiting for him to declare bankruptcy and disappear. Savings accounts are insured by the government. Gold? No. When it’s gone, it’s gone. You can have private insurance, but would you trust it? Look at AIG. And the insurance wouldn’t compensate you in gold. You’d get worthless paper dollars. Better to stuff a few bags of silver in a deposit box at a local bank. If the bank fails, money will vanish, but goods in deposit boxes will remain.

If Obama and the Fed manage to eat our savings by printing money, what will we have left? Subsistence agriculture and bread lines. People in cities will starve. It may be especially bad in Florida, where we are suffering an unprecedented wave of blights and exotic pests. Oranges are probably going to get very scarce over the next five years because citrus greening is incurable. We may lose our bananas. Growing tomatoes here is already very hard; without chemicals, it can’t be done.

What do you do when you live in Miami and times get hard? The fish and peacocks and ducks would disappear in two months. Squirrels and pigeons would follow. You can’t grow enough fruit to live on, if you have a typical lot. It’s hard to grow vegetables here, and most lots are small anyway. Many homes here have topsoil six inches deep. Under that, it’s pure coral.

I never pray for God to fix things for us. Not exactly. I pray that we will turn to him and submit to him because of our problems, and that he’ll give us recovery only after that happens. We won’t learn anything from an unconditional handout. It would be a false kindness, and God doesn’t deal in those. I actually pray he will maintain the recession until we have revival. Otherwise, the suffering will be in vain. I also ask that he end the recession for those who have turned to him already.

Obama thinks a chicken can make a living by eating its own eggs. Everything he tells us goes against common sense, history, and basic economics. Borrowing only leads to prosperity when you reasonably anticipate that the borrowed money will enable you to make enough money to repay it. Otherwise, the result is bankruptcy. Can a nation declare bankruptcy? I guess so, but it won’t protect us from harsh consequences. We may weasel out of our debts by devaluing the currency, but we’ll all become poorer, and we’ll have to pay higher interest to China the next time they lend to us. This is how bad credit works. Everything costs more. But it’s worth it, so we can have essential government services, such as the subsidy of multimillion-dollar studies to tell us why trout can’t fly.

I think we’re going to have labor pains for a while. Things will get better and then worse, over and over, until the big collapse comes. The fluctuations will warn people and help those who are teachable to make preparations. Hopefully I’ll be ready. Life isn’t perfect when you’re in good standing with God, but it’s a whole lot better.

I Have my Brass

I am a bad person. I am an instigator.

My dad used to play the trumpet and some other horns, and he loves music. But he quit playing, because it’s so loud. You almost have to live on an island to practice the trumpet without annoying people.

I saw Wynton Marsalis in the documentary, Jazz, commenting while occasionally playing a horn. I realized his playing wasn’t loud, and knowing nothing about horns, I figured he had to have a special instrument that played quietly. Apparently, there is no such thing. But I found a weird electronic mute made by Yamaha, which supposedly allows horn players to practice quietly without the back pressure problems a regular mute causes.

I emailed the information to my dad, and now he’s fooling around with his cornet. I may have succeeded in tempting him.

This has to be better for him than watching the tube.

I am Now Self-Actualized

I think I have the pizza-pan situation figured out. I need thin steel, not cast iron. And I need three sizes. First, 12 x 18, to serve more than one person. Then 12 x 12, for a serious meal for one person or a small meal for two. Then 9 x 9, for a normal meal for one. Cast iron is out. Steel works, so there is no need to look for another answer.

I don’t know what to do with all this power. I pretty much have pizza under my thumb, so I can’t continue eating it every day with research as my excuse. I guess the smart move is to bag and freeze the cheese and sauce and have pizza maybe twice a week.

I’ve reached a point where it’s hard to think of anything new I want to learn to cook. I guess cheese poori and certain Indian appetizers and entrees would be good, but I can get a good cookbook for that; I don’t need to be original. Same for Chinese.

It’s unbelievable, now that I think about it. I can make the best pizza in Miami. I can make the best cheesecake anywhere, as far as I know. My barbecue is the best I can find anywhere near me. Prime rib is a joke. Aged steaks are simple. I can cook everything I really care about. God has really blessed me.

If only I could eat this stuff every day.

I guess now I should focus on small, healthy meals that are easy to fix. To me, that means meat or fish, plus non-starchy vegetables. Dull, but cheap and fast.

My dinner menu is embarrassing. Here’s the kind of thing I fix: two tiny pork chops fried in olive oil with no breading, half a can of greens, and Brussels sprouts with salt and butter. I really can’t eat more than that without fattening up. My current routine (admittedly derailed by pizza research) is one serving of oatmeal at breakfast, a sandwich and some pickles at lunch, and a little-bitty dinner. I’m changing that now; the small, sad-looking dinner, which is the largest meal, will come in the middle of the day.

I like vegetables, so eating things like greens and sprouts is not a problem. As far as I know, all Southerners like vegetables. I don’t know why. I always hear about people who won’t eat vegetables. They hate broccoli. They hate spinach. I don’t get it. No one in my family is like that. One of the best Southern meals is hot cornbread, soup beans, and fresh, raw vegetables. Southerners aren’t fat because they don’t eat vegetables. They’re fat because they also eat Moon Pies and chili-cheese-slaw dogs.

I’ve been watching Ken Burns’s Jazz for a few days. I love this documentary. I own a copy. Sometimes the BS can be hard to take; I don’t know why so many successful young black men talk crap, when their achievements stand for themselves. But generally, it focuses on the music, with a surprisingly fair approach to race relations.

Actually, I do know why so many successful young black men talk crap. It’s because Martin Luther King died and Jesse Jackson lived. They pattern themselves after the sideshow act, instead of the greater man who preceded him and died without leaving a substantial video or audio record. King didn’t live long enough to make the kind of impression Jackson has. That’s truly unfortunate. Slogans and chants and doggerel and transparent sophistry are no substitute for character, brains, and dignity.

Now that I think about it, Malcolm X was about fifty times the man Jesse Jackson is, and he died young, too. He had a weakness for slogans, though.

Anyway, I keep watching these videos and marveling at the music. Louis Armstrong is astonishing. He’s like Mozart. He was so good, it didn’t even make sense. Greatest jazz instrumentalist who ever lived. Arguably the greatest vocalist, although you would never know it from garbage like What a Wonderful World. I think THC had pickled his brain by then. They say he smoked every day. Some defend his later work, but far as I can tell, he said all he had to say before he hit middle age.

And people say dope won’t hurt you.

I’m glad I never cared for drugs enough to stick with them. I have never understood the appeal of pot. Sometimes I think other people smoke dope to be more like people like me. Some people have no sense of humor and no creativity and no ability to relax unless they’re high. If you have those things naturally, maybe dope seems pointless. People take drugs to compensate for shortcomings, so my theory makes sense to me. I admit, I’d love to have natural self-confidence comparable to what stimulants provide.

To get back to jazz, Bix Beiderbecke was another superhuman talent. Seems like he could do absolutely anything except quit drinking. He didn’t consider himself a pianist; his instrument was the cornet. But I have a couple of his piano recordings–stuff he played on the spur of the moment, almost as a lark–and the things he did are like nothing anyone else was playing at that time. It’s like a fusion of Debussy and Thelonious Monk.

He was never able to get it together, and he drank himself to death before he turned thirty. Maybe some people are too talented and too creative to lead happy, successful lives. Maybe the human body can’t contain them.

As I listened and watched, I wondered why Christian music couldn’t have this kind of quality and creativity. It’s not as if musical creativity didn’t exist before jazz. Stuffy classical musicians killed it, out of ignorance and misplaced worship. In the times of Mozart and Beethoven and Chopin, a classical musician was required to improvise. It’s virtually forbidden now, but the greats used to sit and make up melody lines on the spot, just like jazz musicians do now. Liszt could take sheet music for an orchestra and play it on the piano, at sight, while making suggestions and criticisms as they occurred to him.

American popular music was pretty weak (Turkey in the Straw, heaven protect us) before jazz and the blues, and improvisation in classical music was essentially banned, so it’s no wonder most popular music, including the Christian variety, is second-rate. Why can’t a Christian pianist sit and improvise brilliantly during a worship service? No reason at all. They used to do it. Maybe blue notes and certain jazz rhythms would be somewhat out of place, but those things aren’t essential to spontaneous music.

I keep banging away at sight-reading. Yesterday I amazed myself by playing a triplet correctly, while staying in time. I don’t know if I’ve ever done that before. I used to break measures into twelve beats and practice slowly, I think. I need to start journaling my progress, so I don’t get discouraged. I still can’t play anything, but I’m making substantial headway.

I should thaw out some tiny pork chops. I hate to miss out on a fine feed like that.

Haiti and Kentucky

Two prayer requests.

First, RE Haiti:

Hi Steve,

The babies from the abandoned baby unit need prayers, They are missing! Pray they are found safe.
Susie Krabacher was on CNN this morning and the url is a link to the interview.
http://www.cnn.com/video/?/video/world/2010/01/20/intv.krabacher.orphan.aid.cnn

Made “tiny” if the link is broke.
http://tinyurl.com/ye58z5b

Missing babies are the part that just breaks my heart.

Thanks,
Cindy

Second, from Kentucky, Heather is asking for help:

Hi Friends,
Just had my appointment with the high risk OB and they believe that the baby has a tumor of some sort on it’s spine. I know I depend on you for prayer for my mom and everything else in my life, but could you please ask the Lord to heal this?
They believe the tumor is non-cancerous, but would require surgery after the birth, which can be so dangerous and I would love to be able to avoid that if possible.
I am scheduled for an MRI on Friday so they can have a better look. That is the same day as mom’s oncologist appointment, and I know that I had already asked you all to pray for a good result with that.
Thank you and God Bless.
Love,
Heather

Have at it.

Forget Health Care Reform; This is Important

I’m making Sicilian pizza in my old Lodge skillet. This skillet is 12″ across, on the inside, at the bottom. I sanded it when I bought it, so the bottom isn’t as rough as most Lodge skillets.

I’m using two cups of bread flour, salt, pepper, yeast, and water. That’s it.

I let the dough rise in an oiled bowl. It stuck to the bowl, which is normal unless you add flour to the oil. It turns out this doesn’t matter, as long as you can get the dough out without mangling it. The imperfections you get from pulling the dough off the bowl disappear later.

Here is what I have right now. I oiled the dough (extra light olive oil), spread it out, flipped it (so the finger indentations would be in the bottom of the crust) and put it on top of a Pyrex bowl, which you can’t see here. The bowl is to keep the skillet off the warm stovetop. I want the warmth, but I don’t want so much of it the dough is adversely affected. As soon as the dough pumps back up, I’ll add sauce and cheese.

Ordinarily, for a 12″ pie, I use 2 ounces of sauce concentrate, plus water and other ingredients. I generally end up discarding a small amount of the sauce mix, because 2 ounces are a little too much. Today I plan to use a minimum of the whole two ounces. Sicilian requires more sauce, and it seems like Saporito (the sauce I’m using today) doesn’t extend quite as far as Super Dolce (my usual sauce). I’m pretty sure the Stanislaus website says it should be the other way around, but I call ’em as I see ’em. I’ll also use a full 8 ounces of Costco mozzarella.

The oven is at 550°. I plan to rest the skillet on the hot stone. I hope this crude Lodge skillet isn’t so thick it doesn’t heat up in time to brown the crust.

I hope I can get this silly thing out of the skillet. As of now, it’s loose, riding on a layer of oil.

More

Here’s what I have now. I put 9 ounces of cheese on it, and a little over 2 ounces of sauce (measured before adding water). Looks pretty good. I wanted to flop it out of the pan and put it on the stone during the last two minutes, but I won’t be able to. The pan is too deep. The cheese would slide around and cause problems.

More

Got a few more photos.

Here is the pie after I miraculously popped it out of the skillet. It didn’t stick at all, except for a tiny area where some cheese hit the iron. I stuck it on the stone for a minute after I got it out, to improve the crust.

Here are some slices, so you can get an idea of the thickness.

Here is the bottom of a slice. Oddly, no other slice got that dark. I should have photographed one of the others. This slice tasted off because of the burned area, but you can see the indentations in the crust, which are very important to a good Sicilian pizza.

Here is my assessment. Cast iron is not nearly as good as thin steel. The texture of the pie I made the other day was astonishing. This one was imperfect. It leaned toward leathery. The difference was small, but it’s the difference between good and sublime.

Another problem, as mentioned above: it browned unevenly. And the cast iron seemed to give it a flavor that is not right for pizza.

Last thing: to get the crust brown, I had to leave the pie in the oven until the cheese browned. Unacceptable. Burnt pizza cheese is an abomination bad pizzerias have taught Americans to like. Pizza cheese can have a small amount of browning, but this pie was at the limit.

I consider the cast iron experiment a failure. From now on, it’s thin steel or nothing. I can’t get pizza this good anywhere near me, but the other Sicilian I made was straight from paradise.

My online source for the correct pans is an outfit called Zesco. They’re expensive ($24.50 each), but they should last a hundred years. I’ll report when I get to try them out.

Incidentally, the cheap GFS pan I bought has no faults. If they made a smaller one, I would not have shelled out for rolled steel pans. If you can find a thin steel pan in a size you like, don’t bother with “authentic” pans. And bake the seasoning onto the pan, and never wash it.

67$ for Plain Old Skillet

Today I got blown out of the water while trying to snipe a Wagner skillet on Ebay. The Bible of cast iron collecting said the maximum value was $45, so that’s what I used as my high bid. Someone showed up and offered $67 at the last minute.

Is it me, or is Ebay disappointing these days? Cast iron prices are insane. Sometimes you get an okay deal, but skillets routinely go for prices far above the market rate.

I want to start making Sicilian pizza in a cast iron skillet. I don’t like round Sicilian, but cast iron seems like the perfect choice, and skillets are the easiest thing to come by. I want a big skillet I can dedicate to this, so it will develop a perfect surface. I have a crummy Lodge I can use, but I’ll need something better to replace it once I set it aside for pizza.

Maybe a square griddle or skillet is the way to go.

The Gordon Food Service pan I bought seems to work perfectly; it’s just too big. Any steel pan will work, if I can find the size I want.

I still haven’t used silicone bakeware. I don’t know if it will give me a crunchy outer crust, the way metal will. I assume it must be capable of doing this, because otherwise, who would buy it?

I just checked Williams-Sonoma’s site. Wow, what a mistake. Enough said about that.

Hmm…Lodge makes a square griddle that would be perfect. I don’t trust the rough surface, but maybe it would work. Now that I have a Multimaster, sanding the inside wouldn’t be too hard.

The best thing is probably to give up, order a couple of real pizza pans, and get on with life. But for today, it’s going to be my lame Lodge skillet.

I Judge You for Judging, Even When You Didn’t

I got some glib, condescending comments about Pat Robertson today. I started to respond, but then I deleted them. I make an effort to check the things I write, and people show up and post judgmental comments that are obviously not supported by a scintilla of research, and they expect me to post them and take the time to respond thoughtfully. They expect me to work much harder than they do, and I get tired of it. If you’re going to argue with me about the Bible, read it first. If you’re going to argue with something I said, make sure I said it. WordPress’s comment page has a Trash link for good reason.

If you didn’t watch the Robertson video, and you didn’t read my blog posts carefully, and you don’t read the Bible, you will not read and consider my comment responses. I am not stupid enough to waste my time researching and writing for people who have proven they won’t benefit from it.

The irony of the Robertson situation is amazing. The people who are condemning him are doing exactly what they falsely accuse him of doing. They don’t watch the video. They have no idea what he said. Still, they condemn him and post lies. Because, in their own minds, they’re better Christians than he. If judging other people’s sins is bad, how bad is it to judge other people for judging, when they never did?

Robertson did not say Haitians deserved what they got. He didn’t even say they brought it on themselves. He did not express happiness over the earthquake. He sent them (and is still sending them) millions of dollars. He prays for them. He shows compassion. He is doing more for Haiti than anyone who is criticizing him, and when he pointed out that idolatry causes problems, he was doing them a kindness, as a Bible-reading Christian should already know: “Let the righteous smite me; it shall be a kindness. And let him reprove me; it shall be an excellent oil which shall not break my head.”

I guess I should point out that I’m quoting the Bible, so the uber-holy folks who don’t actually read the Bible won’t show up in my comments to tell me how stupid the above passage is.

The only thing Pat Robertson can be accused of in good faith is a breach of tact, committed out of love. I wouldn’t even go that far. If my house fell on me and I were worshiping demons, and an evangelist came to dig me out, and while he was doing it, he said, “You’ll be better off if you give up astrology and Santeria,” I’d thank him for the advice. At least I hope I would. I search the Bible and books and sermons for correction, because I know I need it. I am very concerned about the changes I need to make. What’s wrong with a little advice? I mean GOOD advice, not platitudes offered by people who write by reflex.

The left’s bizarre, unbiblical, unchristian, humanist obsession with denying the existence of sin has leached into Christianity, and now Christians think it came from God. Look, sin is bad. It causes problems. Exposing it is a good deed.

Pat Robertson didn’t kill anyone. He didn’t drive anyone to suicide. No one will have to have counseling because of what he said. BUTCH UP already. How did we end up with such stupid priorities? Bodies are rotting under fallen buildings, and people are up in arms over a few words an old man uttered in compassion. Who knows how many Haitians will hear his words, consider them, and be blessed?

I can’t believe I have to defend this guy. I am no fan, but it’s disgusting to see other Christians lie about him like this. Whatever else may be true of him, he gave his life to God, and he has brought millions of people to Christ, and when we get to paradise, they’ll all be there. How many of his ignorant, lying critics have a record like that? You people would have a Bentley crushed because of a scratch on the fender.

Stop telling lies about this man. Give it a rest and focus on helping the Haitians.

I’m not taking comments on this post. Experience has shown that it would be pointless.

“Your Lifelong Dream Just Went on Craigslist.”

This is really funny. Mike is pulling his hair out because I told him we should open a pizzeria. I’ve been sending him Craigslist links for pizzerias that are for sale, just to torment him.

There are three pizzerias we used to frequent when we were kids. It turns out one of them–Mario the Baker–is for sale on Craigslist, so I forwarded it to him. He’s losing it.

There is no way we could buy this place. They want 1.4 million, which is like 20 times what I could consider investing. I don’t think haggling will get us where we need to be; call me a pessimist. “How does thirty thousand sound?” No, I don’t think so. But it’s fun to throw the temptation out there. I think Mike would sell his kids for parts to buy this place.

Mario’s was pretty good when I was a kid, but it’s not good now. It’s barely acceptable. The rolls are nice, but I would steer clear of the pizza. They have a second store now, near me. I tried it twice, and I haven’t been back.

Mike says he has talked to the owner. They sell a thousand dozen rolls a day. He says the old owner was a guy who collected toy trains, and he sold out to a Cuban family. That probably explains the bad pizza. I’ve only known of one really good pizzeria run by Cubans.

I was lucky enough to live near a lot of Italians when I was a kid. There were a lot of Mafia families a few blocks north of us. In North Miami and south Broward, there are a number of good pizzerias. South of that…you are taking your life in your hands. People down here think bad pizza is wonderful. They don’t know the difference. Send them to New York for a week, and they’d cry when they got back on the plane.

Simplicity

I know I’m crazy, but I can’t help myself. I started looking at pizzerias for sale on Craigslist.

My problem is, I know nothing about running a business. That’s what scares me. But I know what kills most pizzerias. Bad food, bad locations, unrealistic prices, stupid hours, and bad service.

It’s surprising how little money gets you in the door. I figured it would be like $100K, minimum, but it looks like a lot of places are ready to sell out for much less. You could equip a small place, from scratch, for maybe $30K.

I think a smart person would go to each of these places and try the food. If the food is good, the location is good, and the prices are okay, it’s a bad buy, because they’re doing things right, and they’re still not making money. If the location is good and everything else stinks, it’s an open door. They’re doing something wrong, and you can fix it.

We have a place called Cozzoli’s, in South Miami. It’s the worst. Bad sauce. Weak crust. Cheese that tastes artificial (I don’t think it’s real cheese). They should make money hand over fist, because the location is fantastic. But over and over and over, the place gets bought by people who just can’t cook. People will eat mediocre pizza, but when it gets downright bad, they’re going to stay away. I could take that place and make money, if Cozzoli’s would go away. The key would be to get rid of their disgusting food, which you probably have to buy in order to be a franchisee. The problem is not hard to spot, but it’s impossible to fix, unless you have a talent for cooking. And very few people have that.

Pizza is the hardest thing there is to cook well. I tried for years and got nowhere. There are lots of pizzerias near me, and I only know two within ten miles that I think of as worth visiting. None come close to the pizza I make. I beat them all; no contest. Not even close. Only a tiny percentage of restaurants have recipes developed by people who know (and care) what tastes good. They think desire and service and hard work are all it takes, but if the food isn’t right, no one will miss you when you close. If the food is exceptional and you don’t have any other serious liabilities, you should make money.

For someone like me, the key would be simplicity. Sharply limited menu, with extremely good food. As few seats as possible. Minimal staff. I could manage to make pizzas and sell them to people. But overseeing a wait staff? Looking after a big parking lot and dining area? I could see myself making a real mess there. In order for me to get anywhere, I would have to start out with a place that, for all intents and purposes, was a vending machine with ovens. Like a Domino’s with two or three seats. Keep it clean, cook the food, and keep the books. No live music. No bar. No kiddie area with a big bin full of slobbery plastic balls.

All I have to do is convince Mike to abandon his life and move a thousand miles. That should be easy.

“I’m Sorry, but Mike Ate Our Inventory Again.”

I know I am smoking crack, but I am checking out the SBA website to find out what would be involved in starting a storefront takeout pizza place. All I need is a town up the coast where the pizza stinks.

Perfect, Mind-Blowing Sicilian Pizza

This is incredible. I can make Sicilian pizza. More than that, I can make the best Sicilian pizza on earth.

I made a pie today, figuring it would only be a good baseline effort. Somewhere to start. But it’s magnificent. If I had only cooked it longer and gone a little heavier on the sauce and cheese, it would have been the finest Sicilian pie imaginable. As it was, it shocked me. The smell that’s lingering in the house is still driving me crazy.

When this happens to me–and it happens a lot–is it luck, or does it mean God cares about good food? There has to be a reason he has given me so many good recipes.

I’ll tell you how to do it.

My local GFS didn’t have Super Dolce sauce, so I used Saporito. I added a little sugar to make it as sweet as Super Dolce. Other than that, I did everything the same. This is for a 12 x 18 rectangle.

INGREDIENTS

4 cups King Arthur bread flour (or any bread flour)
2 teaspoons salt
2 teaspoons pepper
4 rounded teaspoons dry yeast
1 pint water

Activate the yeast in the water. Put the other stuff in a really big food processor. Mine almost died when I did this. You may as well break your dough into two portions and process them separately.

Mix the dry stuff. Start dribbling the water and yeast in. When the dough forms a coherent glob, stop adding water and process for one minute. You want it a little sticky, but you should be able to handle it. Seems like you want as much water in it as you can manage, without ending up with something so loose you can’t make it into a pie.

Form the dough into a smooth glob, oil it heavily, and put it in an oiled dish to rise. Probably best to use a dish that somehow resembles the pizza pan. In other words, round for a round pan, and so on. It will make it easier to make the dough fit the pan.

Punch the dough down when it rises. Let it poof back up a little. The more time it has to rise, the better the flavor will be.

Dump it in an oiled steel pan and mash it until it fits. Make the borders slightly higher than the middle. Don’t overdo it, because you can end up with a pie that’s so tall around the edges, the cheese runs into the middle.

Make sure the top of the dough is oily (light olive oil, not green), and let the dough rise some more. I let mine get up to about 3/4″ in height. You should flip the dough once while you’re making it fit, because this will make the bottom of it lumpy. That will give you wrinkles and air spaces that will give you different degrees of doneness on the bottom of the pie. This is a very good thing.

SAUCE INGREDIENTS

8 oz. Stanislaus Saporito or Super Dolce sauce
2 level teaspoons sugar (Super Dolce) or 3 (Saporito)
1/2 – 1 teaspoon garlic powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon white vinegar

Man, this was good.

1 teaspoon olive oil
2 teaspoons dry oregano – get something decent, not Badia
enough water to make the sauce loose – maybe a cup

I used 3/4 this much sauce, and it wasn’t enough. It might be wise to add a little more oil to the sauce. It got a little dry in the exposed areas, but that may have been because I spread it too thin.

Smear the cheese on top of the pie. Add 16 ounces Costco mozzarella. Cut it with good provolone if you want. I used half provolone on one side of the pie, and it was very good.

Mike was right on the money with the lighter olive oil. I am never using green olive oil on pizza again.

Bake in a 550° preheated oven. I rested my pan on a stone. I gave it 8 minutes, but I should have gone ten. The pan was on the middle rack.

This will be better if you can get the pie to come out so you can give it a couple of minutes on the bare stone, but my stone is too small for that. This dough is sticky, so make sure you use a pan that really works.

I need a smaller pan. The skillet idea comes to mind.

I can’t get over this.

Errand Turns up Cheese & Pan

I’ll be working on pizza storage today. I just got back from Gordon Food Service. Horror of horrors: they were out of Super Dolce sauce. I got a can of Saporito, in case the change was permanent. Saporito is very good; I just like Super Dolce a little better.

I looked around for steel pans for Sicilian pizza. I found a couple on Ebay, and I made an offer. It looks like the gold standard is a cold-rolled steel pan with a wire that runs around the perimeter under the lip for reinforcement. They’re expensive on the web, but Ebay has them much lower. While I was at GFS, I noticed they had steel cookie sheets for seven bucks, so I picked one up.

It seems like it’s a bad idea to wash anything that goes in the oven with a pizza. I don’t wash my screens. It would make them stick. I’m going to season the steel pans and leave it at that. I’ve seen steel Sicilian pans in pizzerias, and they’re never washed. Right now I have the GFS pan in the oven with olive oil. It looks like it may be stainless, in which case I am not sure seasoning it is possible.

I was annoyed to see that light olive oil is no bargain. I hit a grocery on the way home, and their price was $8.25 for 25 ounces. You would think extra virgin would cost more. GFS has a 50/50 blend of olive oil and some other oil. It’s cheap, and it’s probably a great choice, since street pizzerias use cheap ingredients. I’m thinking the smart move is good oil for the rolls and bad oil for the pizza.

GFS didn’t have loaves or bags of provolone. I picked up some slices. I’ll see how it blends with Costco cheese. No store I went to today had any interesting cheese. I can always hit Laurenzo’s market the next time I’m in the north end of town.

Mike and I should open a pizzeria. Seriously. Find a tiny store in a good location near South Miami and start baking. We’d be rich in five years. There is still no really good pizza here. An okay place opened near me a while back, but the location stinks, and we would be a lot better than an okay place. And we could put my cheesecake on the menu. Fat women would stampede the store like enraged buffalo.

GFS has Gold Medal “All Trumps” flour for $22.50/50 pounds. Not all that cheap, really. If I bought ten five-pound bags at the grocery, it would be 50% more expensive, so it’s not nearly as impressive as GFS’s other buys. I still want to try it, though. I’m incorrigible. They also had a brand called “Golden Tiger,” slightly cheaper. Can it be that the Chinese are expanding from tools to flour? It’s probably really good, until the lead and melamine kill you.

I ran by Whole Foods Market because I read that they sell sourdough starter. No dice. I looked for other stuff, such as cheese that might be useful. I think the cheapest cheese I saw was $11.99 per pound. Nothing in that store interests me. I think you have to be a complete moron to shop there. I couldn’t find anything I wanted. Not even an impulse buy. Every so often, when I want something unusual, it turns out they have it, but shopping there on a daily basis is like emptying your wallet directly into the toilet.

Super-organic natural food usually tastes funky. Am I the only one who notices? The store smells “off.” The beverages always have an odd aftertaste. The faux junk food tastes like real junk food that has a disease. The peanut butter is like sand and Crisco. The only good stuff is the normal food, like croissants and fresh seafood and so on. But why would you go to Whole Foods and pay twice as much, if it’s something you can get at a real grocery for less?

Am I too excited about good, cheap food? I can’t help myself. I’ll spend a hundred bucks learning how to make a two-dollar pizza.

Here’s a great Youtube find:

I’ve never seen pizza with cheese under the sauce, but I’m sure it’s great. This joint is in New Jersey, so if the pizza wasn’t good, they would be out of business. It’s not like Miami, where bad pizza can put your kids through college.

Here’s another good one:

Didn’t they both refer to San Marzano tomatoes? I should check those out.

More

From the Stanislaus Foods website:

ALTA CUCINA® “NATURALE” STYLE PLUM TOMATOES

The closest thing to Old Italy in America! Favored by restaurateurs serving the classical dishes of Italy’s urban “ristoranti,” Alta Cucina® “Naturale” Style Plum Tomatoes are Stanislaus’ answer to true San Marzanos, which are no longer available except at exorbitant prices.

Today, true San Marzanos are generally unavailable because small Italian farmers have consolidated and turned to mechanized commercial tomato varieties rather than the hand-harvested San Marzano. Although lax enforcement has allowed some Italian packers to get away with mislabeling tomatoes as “San Marzano” (when in fact they are not), in truth, the treasured San Marzano tomato has all but disappeared.

And that’s why we created Alta Cucina® “Naturale” Style Plum Tomatoes! Each can of Alta Cucina® is full to the brim with sweet, tender, ultra-premium plum tomatoes in “Naturale” style juice—packed from select tomato varieties chosen by Stanislaus for their fresh fragrance, exquisite flavor, and delicate “melt-in-your-mouth” texture.

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Here’s a place that sells steel Sicilian pizza pans: CLICK.

Pizza is a a Lifelong Pursuit

My church is going crazy these days. Unlike the major news outlets, which will be gone from Haiti in a week, we are engaged in a long-term effort, and because of the earthquake, it’s going to be ramped up. All sorts of stuff is happening. They even have me writing copy for them.

Trinity Broadcasting is all over this, and our church is going to be their main resource in the Haiti campaign. I suppose that makes sense, since most of the people who attend are Haitian. On top of that, our pastor has hooked up with Friend Ships Unlimited, and they have a boat on the way from Lake Charles. It’s going to dock in the Port of Miami and go back and forth between Miami and Port au Prince. The people making this stuff happen are working late hours and going without sleep. It’s pretty impressive.

The services this weekend were largely aimed at Haiti. The Saturday service was converted to a time of prayer, and we heard a lot about the crisis in the other services. Attendance was heavy.

One of the church’s pastors–an older gentleman of Haitian descent–was in Port au Prince when the earthquake came. He spoke to us. He said the ground shook for four or five minutes. Ordinarily, he would have been some distance out of town–he only goes to Port au Prince when he’s on the way back to Miami–but on this occasion he was in Port au Prince a day earlier than usual.

He said he was in a hotel, on the second story, when it hit. The ground moved vertically as well as horizontally. He had to hold onto a doorframe. When it was over, he went out in the short street where the hotel was located, and six people were already dead. One was a little girl whose head had been severed. He also found a woman whose hand had been amputated when her fallen ceiling pinned her wrist against her refrigerator door. She was trapped for six hours like that. The hand was severed, but the arm was still trapped. She had to stand and wait while rescuers freed her.

The neighborhood was white with concrete dust. It must have been like 911.

When the quake was over, no one at church knew whether this man was alive or dead. He managed to hitch a ride to Miami on a military flight, and he arrived in the sanctuary without notice, much to everyone’s relief.

We work with Mission of Hope. They have a big campus outside Port au Prince. It was far enough to be spared significant damage. I suppose now it will be bursting with people who need help.

I don’t know all that much about our involvement, because I have never participated in it. I guess that will change. I don’t know what they’ll want me to do.

There are tons of good charities working on this. I doubt it matters which one you help, as long as they check out. If you want to find out about our organization, you can find it at this link.

I still don’t know what’s going on with their plan to put me to work in their cafe. I hope they follow through on their plan to get a pizza oven. I don’t know if it’s practical, though. I rarely eat anything more complicated than cheese pizza, but most people want a lot of toppings, and that makes the whole business much more complex and bothersome.

My flour education never stops. This weekend, I learned some people use flour made from durum wheat, which is the same stuff used to make coarse semolina. You can’t get fine semolina flour around here, as far as I know. Whole Foods doesn’t have it. I’d like to try it. I’ve also learned that Gordon Food Supply sells a brand of flour that’s very high in gluten. That would be fun to try, although if I don’t like it, I’m stuck with a huge bag of useless flour. I’m sure it would be great, but these days, I tend to lean toward low-gluten flour, and by that I mean 3 grams per “serving,” as defined on the label.

I had read that Caputo 00 flour was low in gluten, and I repeated it, but this weekend I found an “expert” website bearing a claim that 00 flour is actually high in gluten. I don’t know what to believe. I guess I could look for a Caputo label, online.

Man, I love the Internet. Apparently, it’s 11.5% gluten, which is high.

I had read that it was low in gluten, and that the things that made it special were its purity and the fineness of the grind, but apparently I was deceived. I don’t like it in pizza, so it doesn’t matter, but I don’t like being wrong, either.

You can get flour that’s 14% gluten. That must be interesting. Sometimes when I make pizza, I add gluten with a spoon, so it’s not like you’re limited to what you get in the bag. Gluten is easy to buy, and it beats working yourself to death trying to find the ultimate flour.

Costco cheese continues to exceed expectations. I have learned that a lot of the things I do to make pizza work are actually necessary only to compensate for bad cheese.

I put white vinegar in my sauce. It turns out the reason I need that is that most cheese has no flavor. With Costco cheese, I can reduce it or omit it. I also add olive oil to my sauce. I didn’t think it had much effect on the cheese, but it does. If I go over a tablespoon in two ounces (weighed as it comes from the can) of Super Dolce sauce, the oil rises up into the cheese and makes the pie too oily. This doesn’t happen with Gordon Food Supply Primo Gusto cheese, but it’s a problem with Costco mozzarella, so I have to drop the olive oil down to a teaspoon or two. It’s good to be able to reduce the olive oil, because the oil I have degrades the taste of the sauce a little. Oil oxidizes in the bottle before you buy it, and I think that gives the sauce a slight cardboard taste. Mike says the answer is lighter, cheaper olive oil, but if the olive oil is reduced, I don’t have to worry about it.

Someone advised me to add cheddar to my cheese. This pumps up the fat content and adds sourness, which you need. Works great with Primo Gusto, but there is no need to do it with Costco cheese. It might be nice to cut it with a good provolone or scamorza, however.

Mike advised me to underlay the mozzarella with grated Romano. Again, it depends on the mozzarella.

I’ve noticed that Costco cheese has a smoky smell. I was afraid I had gotten something on the bag, but it turns out the smell comes from the cheese. I guess it has a fragrance because it’s quality cheese.

I have read that Gordon Food Service will special-order Grande Cheese, but you have to buy a whole 30-pound case. I don’t think it’s worth it. I know it’s fantastic cheese, but things are going so well now, what’s the point?

I may run up to GFS and get more sauce to freeze. I plan to make more frozen dough portions. They don’t save time, because it takes a couple of hours to turn frozen dough into a pie. But they do minimize the mess and the work. If you can plan a meal three hours ahead, frozen dough will work for you. If you have to have pizza faster than that, because you can’t anticipate the need, forget it.

You’re better off planning ahead and freezing dough or refrigerating it for a day, because the flavor and texture will improve a little as the dough sits. If I could manage to make sourdough portions, I’d be in paradise. You can’t do that on the spur of the moment. Freezing and sourdough crust go together naturally. I should order some starter.

I could also freeze dough for garlic rolls, although I don’t know if I’d ever use it. A small pizza is a reasonable meal. It won’t make you fat. Add two garlic rolls, and you’re way over budget. Maybe on rare occasions I could fix myself three or four rolls, but it’s risky.

Freezing entire pizzas would be great, but you need a very big vacuum sealer. I don’t see it happening.

The major breakthrough that made all this possible was the decision to use the food processor to knead dough. If I had to use my hands or a mixer, I would never have been willing to make pizza often enough to learn anything. The food processor turns it into a three-minute job, from kneading the dough to putting the food processor parts in the dishwasher. The actual kneading is a little over a minute, and the dough is perfect.

Sooner or later I need to get my Sicilian working. I never found a steel pan I liked. Maybe the best thing is to use a big cast iron skillet. If I dedicate one to pizza, I’ll be able to develop a finish that will assure stick-free crusts. I can make excellent thick-crust pizzas just by using more dough in my regular recipe, but I like the pan-baked crusts they make in New York. They’re a little oily and very crunchy on the outside. My thick crusts are plain old pizza crusts. Wonderful, but not Sicilian. Ordinary pizza crust is like baked bread, which must be why you have to use a stone. A stone lets the crust dry as it bakes. Sicilian is sort of fried on the bottom.

This stuff never ends. But it’s okay. I remember a time when my pizza was disgusting. Now it’s always great; the only issue is whether it has the precise characteristics I imagine before I make it.

The Future is Ours

I had to skip piano practice on Friday because I was busy working on Haiti stuff for my church, but last night, I got back to work. I took out my book of Bach sinfonias and inventions and worked on sight-reading. It was remarkable. I went maybe an hour and a half, and it was not particularly tedious, and it got easier and easier as time passed. I did not make music by any stretch of the imagination, but I felt like something had broken loose and I was finally on my way.

This happens when you try to develop skills. I remember reaching a point in my physics studies where things started to flow. The variables seemed to move around on their own, instead of requiring me to push them. And when I used to play the guitar, I got to a point where my hands sometimes took off by themselves.

The only other skill in which I have this feeling is writing, and the breakthrough has become permanent, because I stuck with it. I write effortlessly now. I don’t think about it. It just appears on the screen. If I could get to the point where I could compose like that, it would be as great a gift as I could ask for. Writing is great, but it’s an extremely difficult skill to market, and unless you hit it big, you don’t touch many people or accomplish anything worthwhile. I’d get more satisfaction out of creating music. I can get words out of my head just fine. The music is still stuck in there.

I screwed up when I was studying physics, even though I had reached the point where I was working pretty fluently. I got burned out after several years of accelerated study, and I couldn’t catch myself no matter what I did. The people at the University of Texas could not have cared less. They didn’t want a troubled student inconveniencing them, so they gave me no help, and they waited for me to give up. I’m sure they were relieved when I quit.

I think I would have been fine had I listened to my own mind. I had found that the way to solve problems was to stop thinking and wait for the solutions to appear through creativity, not analysis. That was the most reliable thing I had going for me. Stop thinking, and wait. But I couldn’t make myself rely on it. It was too weird.

I’m wrong; that wasn’t the real answer. Ultimately, the problem was that I was away from God, so I had plenty of enemies but no help. I prayed, but I didn’t try to change my life fundamentally. So nothing happened. It was as though the ceiling were made of brass and the prayers bounced off of it.

What an idiot. I was in Texas; there were probably great churches all around me. But it didn’t occur to me that I needed to go in and recommit myself to God and get the help I needed.

God will let you flounder and suffer. Under some circumstances, he will let you die while you wander in confusion. You can’t always expect him to wipe your nose for you. I was in a mess because I had done something stupid. I knew better. I had no right to expect to be rescued.

People let me down, too. I’m sure there were people who were supposed to pray for me and reach out to me, but they blew it off. Fixing the world is our responsibility, even though God gives us the power to do it. Bad things happen because there aren’t enough of us on the job.

When I left my church in Miami before taking up physics, I didn’t get persistent calls, asking if I was okay. People didn’t come to see about me. The friends I had made didn’t bang on my door and ask to pray for me. Now that church doesn’t exist. No surprise. Church isn’t primarily about getting miracles and prosperity and growing a giant congregation and getting on TV. I think those are things too many charismatic churches focus on, and that was definitely the case when I was involved twenty years ago. Church is about seeking God’s face and doing what is right. My church wasn’t there for people who needed help, and God wasn’t there for my church. He let it dry up and vanish.

I blew it. My pastor blew it. The other members of the church blew it. I ended up wasting about eighteen years, and during that time, my mother got lung cancer, and my sister continued the smoking habit that eventually gave her lung cancer, and things went badly for my family.

I don’t condemn anyone. It seems like the body of Christ has been burdened with ignorance for about 1900 years–blinded like Samson–and things are still being restored. I know the people in my old church would have done the right things, had they been better informed. I sure would have. I can’t condemn them, when my own performance has been so bad.

Unity is important. Predators usually won’t plunge into cohesive herds. They look for animals that wander off on their own. It’s stupid to think the mission of a church is to build a big facility and get lots of video coverage for a fast-talking pastor who hawks dubious DVDs with his leering, comb-overed photo on the boxes. You look after the members first, and you try to do God’s will. A church is made of members, not bricks. Let Satan get at the members, and the church will fall.

The church I go to now does a better job of binding its members together. There are lots of prayer groups. There are activities and outreaches that get people together. It could be better (and I know it will be), but it beats what I’ve seen in the past.

Piano practice is going well. Lots of things are going well. I think things that have been taken from me in the past will be restored as time goes by. Maybe not everything, but many things. Then when my life is over, I’ll be free from the struggle forever. The vicious, parasitic spirits that torment us like horseflies seem powerful now, but they will be like ticks and worms compared to us, and they won’t be able to follow us where we’re going.

It’s a good deal. Freedom from persecution, and public execution for our enemies. You can’t beat that. We’ll be like Mordecai and Esther, living in safety and peace while Haman and his dead sons were publicly impaled on high poles.

Shame on Us

This morning’s prayer group was phenomenal. Oddly enough, the regular leader was out of town, and the guy who led the meeting is Haitian. He has family in Haiti; he still doesn’t know exactly what’s going on with them, and he is very concerned. Guess what he talked about? Ezekiel 33. Read it. If you think Pat Robertson was wrong to say what he did, imagine how you’d feel if he had read this chapter aloud on his TV show. Here is an excerpt:

1 And the word of the LORD came to me, saying, 2 “Son of man, speak to the sons of your people and say to them, ‘If I bring a sword upon a land, and the people of the land take one man from among them and make him their watchman, 3 and he sees the sword coming upon the land and blows on the trumpet and warns the people, 4 then he who hears the sound of the trumpet and does not take warning, and a sword comes and takes him away, his blood will be on his own head. 5 ‘He heard the sound of the trumpet but did not take warning; his blood will be on himself. But had he taken warning, he would have delivered his life. 6 ‘But if the watchman sees the sword coming and does not blow the trumpet and the people are not warned, and a sword comes and takes a person from them, he is taken away in his iniquity; but his blood I will require from the watchman’s hand.’

That goes way beyond what I feel entitled to say. I just said idolatry causes severe problems, and that it’s a good idea to knock it off.

Funny thing; one of the other guys in the group is Haitian, and he disapproved of Robertson’s words, while agreeing that it was appropriate to talk about Ezekiel 33.

The guy who led the group was a great choice. He knows the Bible really well, and he has tremendous enthusiasm and sensitivity. One of the best things about church is meeting people who stand beside you and reinforce you in your walk. I’m so glad I’m not limited to an hour and a half a week, sitting in a pew, completely passive.

Tonight I’ll be helping with PR, as we reach out to Haiti. Should be interesting.