pizza

I tore the pizza from its box in a manner that betrayed not only my hunger, but my utter disregard for removing pizzas from their boxes nicely. I'm always surprised by what little actually stands between me and any given frozen pizza.

It's just a box and some plastic. And it seems like it should be more. That there should be some literature. Or maybe a pamphlet telling me the history of this pizza. Or maybe a prize or some temporary tattoos.

I threw the pizza into the oven. Loudly. Crashingly. And, when I did, the temperature was set so high (in the interest of time) that there were a few (albeit small, totally manageable) flames that leapt out at me.

But I didn't care.

This was progress. I was absolutely famished. And while it baked I could, in the meantime, soothe myself with the fact that this was much faster than ordering in. Or, for that matter, making pizza from scratch.

So, I had some wine and cheese in the interim (without taking note of any spectacular sunset that might be happening at the moment, nor waxing any other wine and cheese specific bullshit about how great I am, or how great you are, or how great life is).

I knew two things:

1. This, my supposed new oven (was anything in this house really mine? Was anything in this house really new?), has a thermometer permanently affixed to its interior for a reason: this oven gets hotter than any other oven in the world.

2. Though I could eat almost anything frozen, I would refrain from doing so this time. I would wait. Even if it meant eating god damned wine and cheese without acknowledging sunsets all god damned day.
And so it began.

As I checked continually for progress, I saw that the edges of this pizza were melting. And the pepperoni, though not my favorite ingredient, was crisping up quite nicely.

And, if it matters, I could actually hear the sizzle of the cheese that had dropped down into the fire (a second fire was, at this juncture, burning independently of that which came more evenly from the boiler).

The pizza was almost done.

Then I got the bright idea to add some water to the fire to really smoke this pizza (imagine the flavor). It was then that the first thoughts about how this pizza might actually kill me began popping up in my mind.

Yeah, I hear those sirens, too..

The whole house was on fire. No matter, it was from this inferno that an unprecedented culinary detail emerged:

The sauce, which at the parameter had caramelized to a practically candied condition, was sweet, delicately spiced and otherwise still velvety at the epicenter. And, aside from what had happened at the edges, the four cheeses maintained their integrity. In fact, at that point, with the pizza and most of the neighborhood ablaze, I felt that (though clearly still too hot to eat) it was only a matter of minutes before the pizza had rested and properly redistributed it's juices.

No. I was all in.