I’m only blogging because Wii Fit told me it was time for a break.

Here’s what I had for dinner:

Another pita pizza. This one had tomato paste, a little bit of chicken-apple sausage, some pepper jack, some sharp cheddar, and a few baby bellas. And lots of love.

I had to go get my wedding dress altered after work today, and then I came home and promptly fell asleep. I woke up craving pizza, as I am wont to do after a bout of daytime sleeping, so I made this. There was also spinach on the side, but it looked like all of my other spinach so I’m going to ask you to just let your imaginations run wild. While eating, I started my long weekend by watching restaurant wars on Top Chef.

Interesting fact about Wii Fit: at a certain point, it makes you take a break. I would like it if someone came to the gym with me and told me when to take a break. “Hey, Jenny, this elliptical machine will kill you if you don’t step off for a few minutes.”

By the way, I’ve taken some flak from people (DAD) for disparaging the older community in my last post. I’d like to take this opportunity to formally apologize to the two old people at the gym yesterday, because I bet they read this blog and were very hurt. Just to clarify, I wasn’t (necessarily) being ageist. I’m not that way.

Okay, I think it’s time for more virtual hula hooping! I’ve been tagged by Glidingcalm to share five facts and tag five other bloggers. I’ll have to do that tomorrow. It’s going to take me that long to figure out what I’m going to say and come up with five people I can tag.

Pit-za

I’m a little under the weather tonight, so I didn’t have the energy to make my usual gourmet fare (ha). I’ve been thinking about these pita pizzas since I saw them on Green Lite Bites. I crashed right after work and woke up wanting pizza, so this seemed perfect. Plus, the recipe met all of my criteria for the evening:

1. bread
2. cheese
3. five minutes or less
4. toaster oven-friendly

My version had tomato paste, chicken breast, peppers, basil, spinach, crushed red pepper, and reduced fat provolone. With broccoli on the side:

I don’t have much to say about this, except that it was good. I’m really posting it for my sister, because it’s a nice alternative to english muffin pizzas, which she and I both enjoy. The pita bread is more like pizza crust and didn’t get as soggy. It also holds up better under the weight of veggies than english muffins or tortillas or other not-pizza pizza bases.

I’m going back to sleep now. And by sleep, I mean, mindlessly watching Keeping Up With the Kardashians. It’s fascinating to see how the other half lives. Plus, we’re going to cancel cable soon and I need to get my fill of these sorts of things to remember fondly when I’m forced to do things like read books.

Celebration station

I was up until all hours with the college children, monitoring their drink and snack consumption and taking pictures of them as they played Guitar Hero III. I didn’t even get home until 12:30 which, for a Sunday night, is about three hours past my bedtime.

Yes, I am your grandmother.

Anyway, so I somehow still made it to work on time today, and managed to work a full day, only behaving like a zombie for a few hours. But, needless to say, by the time I dragged myself home, I didn’t want to cook, and I was all geared up to order pizza.

And then, I came home and got engaged. And that seemed like another reason for pizza. Really, all signs were pointing to this:

I realize that some people believe that cheese is the essence of pizza. Or something. So I added my own to my cheeseless pizza. So, here we have goat cheese and veggie pizza. I also had a regular cheese slice. AND NO SALAD. It’s a celebration.

I think I’ve always associated pizza with celebrations, possibly because I heard a lot of ads for this growing up. Or because of an early life Chuck E. Cheese experience. Or was it Showbiz? Those bears, I swear.

And, because I promised my mom I would (her email is broken):

Coolest ring ever.

From this experience, I have learned that I have freak fingers. This ring is a size 3 1/2. And it’s a little loose. I guess the jewelers were fascinated by this because I know there were many comments about how they’d never made a ring this size. For an adult.

Thanks.

I’m a girl

If that fact that my toolbox is actually a pink and purple Caboodle wasn’t enough to tip you off, this dinner should be:

I’ve always been one of those people who blots their pizza to get the extra grease off, which is really just a strategy I use to justify eating more. But, ever since I started getting all health-conscious, I’ve been a little wary of a few of my favorite things, like pizza and beer and Mexican food and ice cream and everything that is good in this world. But Matt requests pizza, oh, I don’t know, every week or so, and today I finally caved and said we could get it. And then, I got brilliant - I could get my own pizza WITHOUT THE CHEESE. Talk about a strategy to justify eating more. No cheese easily means that I can double or triple my usual portion, right?

Right.

Oh, and, for the record, I know that lots of people (vegans) order cheeseless pizza for moral and/or ethical reasons (luckily, I don’t have those problems). So, I’m not saying all vegans are really girls (although, really…), I’m just saying it’s very “oh, I’m watching my figure” of me to order a cheeseless pizza. Especially when I admit that I actually filled up on salad (not my fault - I made it for three people and two of them opted out of my delicious spring greens, HAND-SLICED pineapple, and craisin creation, so I went back  to finish it), and I put one of those slices back. And you know what? It felt good. Mostly because it left me plenty of room for

Cake.

Here’s what I can say: cheeseless pizza is actually really good. It’s very saucy. It does, however, make it harder to ignore the fact that the vegetables at this pizza place are not of the highest quality.

So, my mom got here fine, I risked my life driving two hours through torrential rain and hail to pick her up but I’m sure she’s grateful. Not grateful enough to eat my lovingly prepared salad, but WHATEVER. Of course, once I picked her up, the weather calmed down and it looked like I was lying.

We made it to Lawrence for an awesome dinner at Ingredient (I ate that ground turkey salad with the tortilla bowl that blew my mind last time), and because I am a loving and thoughtful partner, I brought home a pizza for Matt.

Today, even though I was on vacation, I went into work for a meeting (I give and I give…) and then, this afternoon, I finally go to meet my new pulmonologist. My experience wasn’t any better today, as the same receptionist was there. We had this really great chat:

Receptionist: Oh. We don’t have your medical history form.

Me: I filled it out on Monday, my appointment was rescheduled.

Receptionist: I’ll call the records people. [calls records people] Okay. They lost it.

Me: Okay, so…

Receptionist: So, you fill it out again.

Me: Okay, there was a lot of information on that form, so, I don’t know, is it just… out there?

Receptionist: They lost it.

Me: Okay. I’ll fill it out again.

Receptionist: [blinking without expression] I feel horrible.

It was so strange. It was like I was a character in Bad Waiting Room Experience: The Sequel.

Though, I will say - I was the only one in there without an oxygen tank, except for one other guy, and I’m pretty sure he coughed up blood. So, comparatively, I’m a ray of shining, healthful light.

Anyway, so, I waited for an hour and a half to see this guy, and I had to be entertained somehow, so I ate a Clif Kid bar and took pictures of myself with my cell phone. I learned that I have huge bags under my eyes. I think I’m tired. Then, he came in for all of four minutes and didn’t even know why I was there. I had to tell him to read the lab results my doctor sent over. So then he ordered five tests, including cool hospital show types,  like a CT scan. Then I punched him out.

Not really, but I so wanted to.

Then I was comforted at the salon by Aveda’s Comforting Tea. Apparently it relaxed me so deeply that I: a) got all my hair cut off and b) said Yes to pizza. And cake.

Clearly, I’m still working through things.

Tomorrow is this. I’m excited. A trip to Wamego means an excuse to buy cookies, fancy foodstuffs, and weird Oz-themed wine.

It’s not delivery, it’s… deliverance

When I was growing up, we never got pizza delivered. I’m still not sure why. Does Little Caesar’s not do delivery? It’s possible. Or maybe it was our household’s overall “do it yourself” ethic. Either way, I didn’t get pizza delivered until I went to college and learned about Pokey Stix from Gumby’s (even though Gumby’s totally sicks me out now, I still sometimes think of Tuesday as “Stix it to me Tuesday!” based on the sheer number of hours I spent staring at the Gumby’s menu tacked up behind my freshman dorm room desk). Then I learned about good delivery pizza, like Amante.

And then I moved to Kansas.

No, really, I’m not one of those people who complains all the time that we don’t have any good restaurants in town, because I enjoy cooking and feel relatively confident in my own ability to make most things I might want. Pizza is different. I’ve never tried to make it, but I’ve seen it done on the TV. It looks hard. So I was immensely happy to discover Lemmy’s Pizzaria (yes, I know, they don’t spell it properly) when I interviewed here. It’s decent pizza, pretty cheap, and doesn’t have that college kid grease all over it. Also, they offer gluten-free pizza AND beer, which I haven’t tried, but you know. Dietary mutants need pizza and beer, too.

Matt and I usually go and eat there because we like the atmosphere (read: big TVs with basketball on them). But tonight, he was working and I had a guest, so I went for delivery. There’s really nothing that makes me feel more luxurious and middle-class than hearing the doorbell ring, opening it, and finding a big pizza box waiting for me. And today, I needed that, because I had a busy day in which I learned:

1. I really can connect with undergrads. I just have to mention something vaguely dirty and they like me. Seriously. They clapped for me at the end of class. Their teachers started it, but still. I almost cried.

2. How to fill out a workplace injury report (Mom - don’t worry. I’m fine). While I was still glowing from the beautiful connection/clapping class, I was ripping giant-sized post-it notes from the wall and some pieces of it fell on my face. And I went to report it to building services, you know, “the building is falling apart - ON MY FACE” kind of thing, and it turns out I had to fill out a form.

My face is fine, especially now that I have medicated it with:

Mmmm. Cheesy. I shared this, so don’t jump to any conclusions, okay? I also made this super healthy and delightful salad:

Notice the shiny salad tongs. We did not have them for years, because I thought they would be really expensive and fancy (I also felt this way about my apple slicer, which I was shocked to learn that you can purchase for less than 3 dollars). Turns out, they’re not. They’re normal. So, I bought some. And now we don’t have to use the pasta claw from the dollar store to very carefully serve salad.

I’m actually really proud of myself that I don’t feel guilty about this meal. I didn’t make it to the gym today (I actually drove halfway there, drove back because I forgot my ipod, drove all the way there, sat in my car, said “no, I can’t do it” and drove back home again, where I had to sit in my car and wait to go inside until I was sure the opossum that I saw had completely slithered down the storm drain across from our apartment. True story). There was a time when no gym + pizza would have sent me into a shame spiral, but not today. I think that’s a good sign.