RUNNEMEDE REMEMBERED

Growing up in a small town in Southern New Jersey


Sunday, October 28, 2007

Mom's gourmet pizza

I was watching something on the cooking channel last night and the advertisement was for a home-made pizza that children would love make with English muffins.

My mom topped that and we really thought we were getting a great treat.

We rarely had left-over spaghetti sauce at our house since I think spaghetti was our favorite meal. And boy could mom stretch one pound of ground beef so we each got at least two nice-sized meatballs. Anyway, when she did have leftover sauce we knew we were in for a really good lunch treat the next day or soon after.

Mom would take almost stale Italian bread, slice it pretty thin, then sprinkle it with EVOO (olive oil), put some sauce on top of that, and put a slice of American cheese on top of that, then sprinkle it with oregano or basil. Then she'd pop the slices (having put them on a cookie sheet) into the oven and heat them up for about 15 minutes at, I would assume 350, since that seemed to be everyone's favorite temperature for baking everything. And out popped our great, gourmet pizza. Beat anything you could get at a pizza parlor, which by the way were only available in South Philly or at the shore.

Now, there's a pizza parlor on as many corners as there are McD's, but let me tell you, today's pizza is nothing like the pizza we got when we were young either from Mom or at the shore. Nobody makes pizza like that.

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