I took the day off yesterday and ended up shoveling snow for most of it. And thus is my life. I also tried very fruitlessly to try to find a place around me where I could get a simple haircut. Apparently, it is an accepted truth that hairdressers do not work when there is a flake of snow. After hours of looking, I did end up at one, but honestly, it should not have entailed that much work. There is literally a salon on every block, and yet somehow they were all nearly closed, on a Tuesday.

Afterwards, I did get to make one of my favorite things to make, ever. Mainly because it’s easy and good – make at home pizza. Please notice that I did not say homemade pizza. Homemade pizza implies homemade dough, which involves flour, yeast, rising, throwing and twirling, which is just way too much work for me. Instead, I buy the premade dough that comes raw in a plastic bag from Trader Joe’s. Look folks, they do the work for you, and it’s 99 cents. Yes, not even $1. It comes in white, wheat, and an herby variety, with green specks of stuff. The wheat I don’t care for and I’m a bit scared of the green specs. I’m good with the plain old white dough. It used to be 79 cents though. But I guess TJ’s must be struggling since they had to make that 20 cent price bump. That’s really gonna hurt my wallet. Now I’m that much further from purchasing that vacation house in the Hamptons.

You simply take this dough, put a little flour on it, and use whatever technique you can to get it to resemble some type of round shape. Put it on a cookie sheet, put some sauce on it, cheese, and topping(s) of choice. I also use premade sauce, from a can or a jar. I know, shame on me. For cheese, it’s usually mozzarella, and this time I used pepperoni. But I’ve also done this with veggies, fruits, etc. Pop it in the oven and you’re good to go. I’ve also made stromboli with the dough, and they claim it makes good breadsticks. It’s not a thick or ultra-chewy dough. In fact when it gets cooked, it kinda thins out a bit, but I still like it better than the other pre-cooked varieties. It’s better and costs about 1/10ths of the price of Boboli and others.

I used to work at a company that gave us free lunch every day. And by free I mean subsidized, so either free or nearly free, depending on how much you decided to eat. It was luxurious. Not because the food was particularly great, but because you never had to worry about packing a lunch, worrying about where to go out for lunch, or wondering if you should take your leftovers into work the next day. The caf was always there, enticing you with their salad bar, sandwich station, entree line, hot grill line, and soups. You could rely on it. Plus it saved you a ton of cash.

In the first few years they basically served typical american cafeteria fare. Towards the latter years, after they changed vendors, the food started getting a bit more interesting. Some days we had sushi or chinese. They even had indian and middle eastern! They were trying to introduce some pseudo-internationalized cuisine onto unsuspecting American suburbanite office drones. And I admired them for it.

My new company feeds us twice a week. On Wednesdays it varies from restaurant or caterer. on Fridays it’s pizza from Tony A’s. But a few common themes abound through our free lunches – vegetarians and dieters, you’re screwed. It’s not the healthiest in the world, and always meat-laden. Last summer on Fridays was my favorite day of the week because of Chef Donald. That’s right, we had a chef that came in on Fridays that grilled for us. It was unbelievable what that man could do with onions and garlic, his main staple ingredients, and whatever meat they brought in that day. I wish it was summer again, because damn, Chef Donald’s meals were the best.

Today was Tony A’s as usual. And I always eat the same pizza – Bacon Burger. Bacon Burger pizza you say? It has everything you love – bacon, ground beef, caramelized onions, and hot peppers. How can you go wrong? After all, everything tastes better with bacon. The onions on this pizza…. Man! I don’t know what kind of crack they sprinkle on it, but I could eat it straight from a bowl.

I didn’t eat the pizza today though. Last Sunday I had decided to make chili. It was a particularly cold day, and on cold days, there’s nothing better than pho or chili. I’d had pho on Saturday (more on that later), so I decided to make chili. I made a giant vat of it and ate the last bits of it today. Mmm, mmm, good.