The Pizza Problem

So, we decide to have pizza as our "splurge" meal this week.

Both of us tend to be pretty good about sticking to core. I eat between one and three points of non-core foods per day. Usually a few pieces of bread, and almost always a Popsicle. Thomas usually only eats points if I remember to give him a few. So, generally speaking, by the end of the week, we have at least 20 of our 35 "flex" points left.

Thus, we splurge.

Sometimes it's ice-cream from Coldstone. Sometimes we get McDonald's. (Although we only did that once. I can't say yet that I've conquered a cookie-craving by walking around the block, but I can say I have firmly decided that McDonald's french fries are definitely NOT work the points.) One week we got dough nuts. I don't really like dough nuts, tho. I mean, I really don't like Krispy Kreme (too many weeks eating leftover boxes of Krisy Kremes after football games... we sold the dough nuts to raise money for the marching band, and any leftover ones were eaten after the games. If you figure out that this often meant we spent more money buying them than we got back, you'd be right.) but I'm not too keen on cake dough nuts either. But Thomas likes them, and it's only fair that we take turns on the splurge.

(Yes, I suppose we could have different splurges... several people have mentioned this to me before. However; first, it's more fun to share. Secondly, if he brings dough nuts into the house, and I bring cheeseburgers... let's be perfectly serious here - chances are good that what's going to happen is that we have cheeseburgers AND dough nuts. So, we share.)

We were originally saving up our points this week for my dad's 4th of July cookout. He does this thing, every year, where he invites a bunch of his conservative, old, redneck sort of friends over to his house and they do what old, conservative rednecks do. Irritate the hell out of me, drink beer, and eat fatty, overly caloric food. I'm sure the irritation is bonus points. Heh. It's not their fault, really, but Thomas and I have nothing in common with these people. Nothing. We don't drink beer, we embrace technology, we think living out in the sticks nearly 40 miles from the nearest movie theater and shopping mall is the height of inconvenience. (My step mother has to take a cooler with her to the grocery store so her frozen foods don't thaw on the way home....) You couldn't pay me enough to live out there; my father, when hearing that his neighbor one farm over was thinking of selling his land to a developer? Went and bought the land. $50,000 on the spot. Just so someone wouldn't put up an apartment complex half a mile away from his house. (So people like my husband and I wouldn't be his neighbors, really. No, he never said that, I added that bit in myself.)

But the closer the weekend got to getting here, the more I really didn't want to go.

First off; I don't really like any of my dad's friends. It's taken me years to get around to liking my dad. (I've always loved him, mind you. I just didn't like him all that much. I'm sure you can appreciate the difference.) And my dad works at our relationship... his friends, not so much. They don't know that gay bashing, and talking about how stupid democrats are annoys me. And if they knew, they certainly don't care. And I just didn't think I wanted to sit through endless rounds of how stupid Obama is for thinking he can sit in the White House where some White Man ought to be. (For the record, I wanted even less to listen to them bitch about Hillary Clinton, even though I'm not too fond of her myself. But the cuts on women would probably be a little more than I could bear and then I'd feel like I had to defend her, which would have left a bad taste in my mouth.)

Secondly: With no computer and high speed internet access and no one I want to talk to, it is indomitably boring out there. There's nothing to do that doesn't involve getting sunburned, bug-bitten, or dirty. I'm a little more outdoorsy than I used to be (I've gotten more sun this year than in the last 10 years put together) but I'm still not really into fishing. Or putting mentos in bottles of diet coke. Or looking at tractors. Or whatever it is people do out there. I wouldn't know.

Third: Too much food options, and none of it healthy. I've been ok with making good choices, or at least better bad choices, when confronted with certain social food situations. None of them have been buffet style, however. And I love pork BBQ. And there's usually about 8 different kinds of dessert. And nothing is made low-fat or with calorie-friendly options. Baked beans. Coleslaw. Potato salad. Pasta salad. I knew that I either could do it (eat within my lifestyle change, that is...) but I'd be hungry and crabby all day. Or I could blow the lifestyle change completely and I'd be stuffed and crabby all day.

So, when it comes down to it, given that I don't want to see these people anyway; it wasn't worth it to drive three hours each way to be crabby and miserable.

I'll apologize to my dad later.

In the meanwhile, back to the pizza problem.

I like: thin crust. Mushrooms, onions, tomatoes and anchovies.

Thomas likes: pan crust. Pepperoni and sausage.

We didn't used to worry about this. We ordered two pizzas, and Darcy ate a slice of each one.

We mutually hate each other's choice of crust. I think pan crust is oily and doughy and often tastes like it really needs to be cooked longer. He thinks if I wanted a cracker, what did I get pizza for? I'll eat pepperoni, but sausage, particularly Italian sausage with all those fennel seeds in it, blech! He thinks tomatoes should be treated reverently, respectfully... and smashed into bits and cooked for hours before eaten. Sauce only. And don't even get me started about the anchovy argument.

We debated getting two pizzas anyway, but I didn't think that would be a good plan. I love cold pizza for breakfast; even more than I like pizza the night we order it, I love getting up the next morning, grabbing a slice of cold pizza and... well, let's just say that if we got two pizzas, I figured we'd eat two pizzas, and then where would we be?

We ended up getting one pizza, on the regular crust (which neither of us particularly likes, but we don't hate it either) with mushrooms and pepperoni.

We'll see if there are other waistline problems with pizza tonight.