Dateline Boston — The other night when I returned home from work, I didn’t feel like cooking. I looked in the freezer. There it was — a frozen pizza calling my name. It was deluxe, cheese, pepperoni, sausage, onions, and peppers. I followed the directions on the box, which seemed extreme. Preheat oven to 450 for 10 minutes. I took the pizza out of the box, opened the oven door, and made my first mistake.
I popped the pizza directly onto the oven rack as directed. I was a little too enthusiastic. A lot of cheese sprang off of the pizza and onto the very hot bottom of the oven, where it immediately started burning. I shut the oven door quickly, thinking it would burn off.
Oh, it burned off, alright. After a few minutes, I noticed smoke coming from the oven vent. One of my biggest fears is the smoke detector going off because of cooking. I realized that I should turn the exhaust fan on. I looked around the kitchen. It was hazy. Uh oh. I opened the kitchen window and the living room window, turned on the living room ceiling fan, and got the portable fan from the closet. The smoke detector remained silent. But for how long? I knocked on my stepson’s door to warn him that I was making pizza and that the detector might go off. He laughed. It was a familiar scene.
The directions said to cook the pizza for 10-12 minutes. I checked it after 10, not wanting to take chances. Thankfully, a billow of smoke did not greet me as I opened the oven door. I did the pizza test. I checked the bottom, which was cooked but not burnt, then stuck my finger into the middle of the pizza. It was cold. Back into the oven.
Is Taste Test Reliable?
Two minutes later, I took the pizza out and cut it into pieces with the pizza cutter. It was quite a task. Putting a pizza directly on the rack makes it crispy, so cutting through it made me feel like I was demonstrating the latest saw from the local home improvement store. I remembered that I liked my pizza chewy.
Determined to have a delicious dinner, I put some pieces of pizza on my plate and turned off two of the fans. I closed the living room window and sat on the couch, freezing, to watch TV as I bit into a piece of flavored concrete. It was awful.
The house smelled like burnt pizza, so I concocted a batch of homemade liquid potpourri, what I make whenever something has burned. I boiled a pot of water, mixing in cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves and a few apple peels. I left it on the stove to simmer. Ah, it smelled like Christmas! And burnt pizza.
Husband came home, closed the kitchen window, and turned off the remaining fans. He joined me in risking a dental visit, and we finished the pizza. I vowed that the next time we got a frozen pizza that my stepson might enjoy, I would write “NOT WORTH IT” on the box, to discourage me from giving into my temptations. Next time I have a craving, I’ll make pasta.
Ms. Vaillancourt may be contacted at snobbyblog@gmail.com
