{"id":11460,"date":"2010-05-31T11:15:52","date_gmt":"2010-05-31T17:15:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.keloland.com\/lund\/?p=404"},"modified":"2023-07-20T21:00:12","modified_gmt":"2023-07-20T21:00:12","slug":"404-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/404-2\/","title":{"rendered":"The Best Pizza I Ever Ate"},"content":{"rendered":"

Take a look at me and it\u2019s obvious; I love to eat. It gives me great pleasure and comfort but it also brings profound distress because the price of that pleasure is having to shop at the big and tall men\u2019s stores for awful looking clothes that scream \u201closer.\u201d<\/p>\n

Anyway, one of my favorite programs on the Food Network features various chefs and food stars talking about the best things they\u2019ve ever eaten when they\u2019re on their own and picking up the check themselves. They use an avalanche of adjectives and superlatives to describe these delicacies and then viewers are taken to the restaurants to watch those dishes being prepared and consumed.<\/p>\n

The other day the subject was pizza which got me to thinking about what I consider to be the best pizza \u201cI\u2019ve\u201d ever eaten.<\/p>\n

More about that in a minute. First a little personal pizza history.<\/p>\n

\"pizzaI clearly remember riding home from a family vacation in 1953 and hearing Dean Martin on the radio singing his new hit song that begins with the line, \u201cWhen the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that\u2019s amore.\u201d<\/p>\n

I asked my mom what amore was and she told me it meant \u201clove\u201d in Italian.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s a pizza pie?\u201d I asked. \u201cI\u2019m not sure..an Italian dessert, I suppose,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\"pizzaIt wasn\u2019t until we got a TV set a year later that we found out for sure what a pizza was when Chef Boyardee himself appeared in commercials demonstrating his pizza in a box.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t recall that it looked all that appetizing..not in black and white anyway.<\/p>\n

Mom was a wonderful cook but she didn\u2019t get terribly adventurous in the kitchen exploring cuisines from other cultures. The spiciest thing in her cupboard was an unopened box of seasoning salt.<\/p>\n

I finally got my first taste of pizza at my best friend, Dixon Hoberg\u2019s 10th birthday party in 1956. His mom and older sister decided to try something a little different. They bought and prepared a couple boxes of Chef Boyardee cheese pizza for us kids to eat before the cake.<\/p>\n

I remember his sister opening that yellow and red carton to remove the contents and watched with interest as she dumped the flour into a bowl to be mixed with a half cup of warm water and left to rise for five minutes\u2026then stretching the dough onto a cookie sheet, spreading the can of the chef\u2019s red sauce over the dough, sprinkling the grated cheese on top and finally popping it into a 400 degree oven. Within minutes the aroma coming from that stove was like nothing I\u2019d ever inhaled before; Absolutely heavenly; ambrosia from the gods.<\/p>\n

The smell was only surpassed by my first taste of that foreign food on my tongue. \u201cSo THAT\u2019S amore,\u201d I thought.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t get me wrong, I loved my mom\u2019s roast beef dinners and just about everything she made but the bubbling tomato sauce and tangy cheese along with a crunchy light brown crust on that first pizza was the best thing I\u2019d ever eaten in my first ten years of life!<\/p>\n

In 1961, Pizza King\u2019s restaurant opened in downtown Brookings and it wasn\u2019t anything like the stuff that came out of a box.<\/p>\n

\"pizza<\/p>\n

Instead of just a tiny can of grated dry cheese, Pizza King taught our uneducated little palates about pepperoni, mozzarella cheese (sliced, not grated) and the variety of toppings that can raise the pizza eating experience to new, never before explored delicious heights.<\/p>\n

We ate there a lot.<\/p>\n

Over the years I\u2019ve eaten and enjoyed lots of pizza. Earl\u2019s in Sioux Falls came awfully close to Pizza King\u2019s. It was also cut in squares and filled with greasy goodness.<\/p>\n

I absolutely loved the taste of Shakey\u2019s Pizza and almost cried when they pulled out of town..then out of the state. The only Shakey\u2019s restaurants left appear to be in California.<\/p>\n

Of course there are pizza joints on every corner these days and most are okay..but nothing really special.<\/p>\n

For that Linda and I still turn to Chef Boyardee. We buy his pizza kit and adorn it with a generous amount of cheese and our own toppings. It\u2019s not only terrific, it\u2019s nostalgic.<\/p>\n

Speaking of nostalgic, Linda and I drove up to my hometown over the weekend and as we were rolling down Brookings Main Street, I glanced over to see that Pizza King was not only still there open for business.<\/p>\n

I asked Linda, \u201cWould you like to go in and find out if the pizza I\u2019ve been raving about all these years still tastes as good as I remember?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSure,\u201d she said, \u201cyou know me, there aren\u2019t many pizzas I don\u2019t like.\u201d<\/p>\n

The first thing, though, was disappointing; no beer. I\u2019d forgotten. It wasn\u2019t an issue back when I frequented the place as a teenager.<\/p>\n

Oh well, Cokes it is.<\/p>\n

\"pizza<\/p>\n

Then, after what seemed like more than the promised 15 minute waiting time, our circle of piping hot sensuous sustenance was placed before us and all the delicious memories came flooding back. \u201cCareful, that cheese will burn the roof of your mouth and lips.\u201d \u201cI know but I can\u2019t wait.\u201d<\/p>\n

Oh, it was sooo good!<\/p>\n

Because we\u2019d ordered a large, there was plenty to box up and take home to eat later..but it was gone the next day.<\/p>\n

So, is Pizza King the best pizza I\u2019ve ever eaten?<\/p>\n

Perhaps..but I still keep thinking back to that very first bite of Chef Boyardee in Dixon Hoberg\u2019s kitchen 54 years ago.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Take a look at me and it\u2019s obvious; I love to eat. It gives me great pleasure and comfort but it also brings profound distress because the price of that pleasure is having to shop at the big and tall men\u2019s stores for awful looking clothes that scream \u201closer.\u201d Anyway, one of my favorite programs…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[60],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11460"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11460"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11460\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11880,"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11460\/revisions\/11880"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}