Culinary Catastrophes

Did you ever have one of those moments when nothing went right? A while ago, a few summers ago to be exact, I decided to be creative and embark on making a pizza. Now ordinarily making pizza is not that difficult. As long as you have the right ingredients it usually comes out pretty good. NOT NEW JERSEY GOOD, but edible nonetheless. Those of you from the Garden State know what I mean.

To make a long story short (yeah, right) I decided to grill the pizza instead of putting it in the oven like normal people. But I'm not normal (according to my family) so, I thought, "why not?" I saw Michael Chiarello, Emeril, and Bobby make grilled pizza! Oh, and that cocky rich women who lives in the Hamptons that has a show on how to make everything you cook "simply Fabulous!" grilled pizza too. So why not me? After making the homemade sauce (gravy ----as my best friend Angel whom I have not talked to at all lately because I'm lazy, and who is also half Italian will tell you it should be called), shredding the mozzeralla cheese by hand with a grater, making homemade pizza dough, adding herbs and seasonings and EVOO and plenty of GAHHHLICK, I was ready to assemble the tasty treat.

Ohhhhhhh, this is gonna be goooood, I thought. WRONG! What I forgot to do was follow the recipe directions. Thinking that I was ready to be THE NEXT FOODNETWORK STAR I didn't bother following them. Why should I? I thought, I know what I'm doing. HA! I carefully assembled the pizzas and plopped them on the fired up Weber grill. Covered them with the lid and was all full of myself.

Little did I know that grilling everything at once, dough and toppings together at once, made for a burnt pizza crust that stuck to the grill! OHMYGAD! I couldn't get them off the dang grill! What was I to do? I tried to get them off with a spatula. It didn't work. I tried folding them over like a big calzone. That made them tear apart into a big glob of saucy goo. I tried to reassemble them into ta pizza likeness, but all that came out looked like something I stuck in a blender. But my kids, being good sports, nibbled at it anyway..........as they laughed wholeheartedly. That was ok, I laughed with them. I learned a lot that day. You decide what.