Pizza Lab #12: Pumpkin Pie Pizza
Pizza Lab is a fun theoretical column in which Meg A. and Erik S. explore their innermost passion for baking and eating pizzas. It exists purely for the sake of experimenting in the kitchen. It may not necessarily be cost-effective everytime, so don’t try this at home kids.
Poor, poor Thanksgiving. It gets the shaft compared to many of the big holidays. While once a celebration of being humble and grateful for what you have in your life, regardless of any lifestyle or belief or faction, it has instead devolved into a tradition of cramming as much food down your throat as physically possible and then complaining about it later. It’s a shame considering it’s one of my favorite holidays due to the rustic nature and themes going on in its season. But unfortunately consumerism and merchandising companies have decided to rename Thanksgiving Day to Get Great Black Friday Deals With Doorbusters Savings Starting 5PM Thursday Day. For the rest of us who still love the message of the holiday, there’s still much joy to be had in all the various traditional, yummy foods that we partake in. As mentioned from time to time, Meg and I already did a Thanksgiving pizza earlier this year (in May for some reason), so if we wanted to do a timely Pizza Lab, we had to be creative. The product was another dessert pizza that fit well into the Thanksgiving season.
Erik: Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays, and Thanksgiving Pizza was definitely one of my favorites that we made. But why on Earth did we have to go and make it in May? Haha.
Meg: Yeah, that was kind of a bad call on our part. But we were young and excited about fun pizza choices. We weren’t thinking ahead.
Erik: Ah well. In the very least, it led to our latest experiment, Pumpkin Pie Pizza.
Meg: Yup! While we never originally intended our pizza labs to correspond to the occasions surrounding their creation, it kind of just happened naturally. In the summer we were in the mood for grilled pizza, in November we wanted pumpkin pie.
Erik: That doesn’t sound unintentional to me… Heh.
Meg: Well you know what I mean. When we started pizza lab it wasn’t like, “We must make a pizza that corresponds to its proper month.” Though if we had the original Thanksgiving pizza probably wouldn’t have been in April.
Erik: What a sad thought! To have been deprived of it until just now…
Meg: True. It’s for the best we made it when we did.
Snack Report: Pumpkin Round-Up
Since we are now firmly in December, it seems safe to say that pumpkin/pumpkin spice season has come to a close. Sure some people might have pumpkin pie for dessert on Christmas, but by and large most people are done for the year. Since this is the case, I’ve decided to round up all the pumpkin/pumpkin spice things I ate this year, so you know what to look for and what to avoid next fall.
Cheat Codes: How To Microwave Bacon (And why it’s better that way)
Bacon is overrated. I’ve said it once before on here, and I’ll continue saying it until the day I am unable to eat food anymore. It doesn’t go great in your Frosted Flakes, it won’t cure cancer, it’s not this magical essence that the past decade of internet stupidity have built it up to be. For whatever reason people have selected this one tasty food out of literally thousands upon thousands of foodstuffs and to sloppily obsess over it for the rest of eternity. The salty snack has been thrust into and out of the limelight here and there, appearing in the odd recipe here and there, like cupcakes or other breakfast treats. But soon it got out of hand. Meals made almost entirely of bacon became a thing. Bacon novelty bandages were create. Bacon t-shirts. For some reason everything needed to be made of bacon and then somewhere around the year 2010 some asshole decided bacon-flavored lube was an idea, and it’s been downhill ever since. Do I hate bacon? No. I merely hate the culture and humor surrounding it. Nothing besides puppies wearing costumes deserves that amount of attention, and on top of that, it’s kinda bad for you. The former can’t be helped since idiots and the internet are things, but the latter can definitely be remedied somewhat.
To be fair, puppies and the internet are also things too.
Recipe Time! Pumpkin Bread
Pumpkin bread is a perennial fall favorite of mine. It’s as delicious to smell as it is to eat. It can be nice and simple, or fancy with seeds and frostings and fillings. I prefer mine on the simple side. The fanciest I tend to go is roasted pumpkin seeds on top. I generally make pumpkin bread once a year, either in October or December (not in November…I don’t want to compete with pumpkin pie) and freeze it to enjoy throughout the year.
Behold the mighty pumpkin.
Microwave Popcorn Made Better
Confession time: I’m a procrastination eater. Because you know, you can’t do work if you’re eating. Seeing as how it’s finals time at school, I’m currently doing a lot of procrastination eating in order to put off working on papers. You have to choose wisely in your procrastination eating choices however, since you just want to put off doing work, not put on 20 pounds. One good snack (and not just for procrastinating, just in general) is popcorn. Fresh popped popcorn smells wonderful, and is tasty too. Bonus: popcorn isn’t terrible for you. Using an air popper doesn’t take that long, but it can be surprisingly hard to find a good (and not crazy expensive) popcorn popper, plus, some people just don’t really have room for one in their kitchens. But never fear! It’s easy to make popcorn in the microwave (and I’m not talking about the prepackaged bags you buy at the store).
You won’t need one of these, don’t worry.
The Poor Couple's Food Guide 
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