Pizza: Nature's Perfect Food

This probably won't come as a surprise with me being a typical single male in North America, but one of my staple foods happens to be pizza. I rarely have pizzaria pizza though, primarily because of the cost, but also because it's really not all that healthy a thing to eat on a regular basis (but they sure do taste good!). Usually, I'll swing by the grocery store on my way home from work and pick up a nice, inexpensive, fresh deli pizza. Although occasionally, I'll have a frozen pizza. Last night, however, I decided I'd try something different and make one myself.

I didn't make the crust myself, though. I'm not ready to try that yet, not to mention the amount of time it would take to make a pizza crust. But I did do all the rest of the cutting, shredding and assembling necessary to make my own pepperoni pizza. I actually had planned ahead and bought everything I thought I'd need during a shopping trip on the weekend.


Yes, there is some pepperoni hiding somewhere underneath all that cheese.Was it healthier than a frozen pizza? I would be very surprised if it wasn't, considering all the various chemicals and preservatives they certainly add. But compared to a deli pizza, I imagine it would have been about the same. They'd be using pretty much the same ingredients I did, although I'm sure I ended up using at least double the amount of cheese they do.

Now I'm sure if I were to figure out the cost of the ingredients I had used, it probably wouldn't have been that much cheaper than buying the deli pizza from the grocery store, especially when you take into consideration the amount of time making it. Perhaps it was just due to my inexperience but the whole process, not including cooking, took me almost half an hour.

What would I do differently next time (and there will be a next time, as there are still two more crusts in the package)? Well, first of all, I think I may need to take some sort of course on how to cut pepperoni, although I think simply using the correct knife would have made a world of difference. Or I could just buy it pre-cut, but since I still have enough pepperoni left for five more pizzas I'm not going to buy any more yet. And secondly, I don't think I actually needed to put the whole can of pizza sauce on this pizza. Even though it comes in tiny cans, I think one can is actually intended for use on two 12" pizzas, not one.

But in any case, I ended up using far less pepperoni than I thought I would. I figured I'd be using half of the big 9" pepperoni sausage, but I only barely used 2". I think I'll be trying to think of creative uses for pepperoni over the next few weeks. Peanut butter and pepperoni sandwiches, anyone?