JUST MAKE SOME CHEESE AND PEPPERONI

By M. Grant Winston, Managing Editor

I took my grandkids to a pizza buffet the other day, and found nothing they would eat and scant little I would. It blows my mind how something that should be stupidly simple was botched so completely. What kind of pizza do little kids eat? Plain cheese. What kind of pizza do bigger kids and most adults prefer? Pepperoni. Neither of these were available when we arrived. There was one with no sauce, and some garden vegetables. There was one with barbecue sauce and chicken. There were two dessert pizzas, one with a suspicious white sauce, and even one with potatoes on it. I kid you not, potatoes on a pizza!

A few adults were taking these things because they were settling for them, not because they liked it. I had to tell the stupid teenagers who work there that they need to make cheese and pepperoni pizzas, and keep them coming. They finally made one of each, which were both gone in about a minute, while the weird stuff sat there and got stale. They didn't make any more of the good stuff, so we left still hungry. Pizza is not a difficult recipe. A simple flour and water crust, a red tomato sauce, Italian cheeses such as mozzarella, parmesan, and maybe some provolone. Toppings when you aren't cooking for the little ones include things like pepperoni, sausage, green peppers, onions, mushrooms, Canadian bacon, olives and little else.

Pizza joints aren't the only places run by idiots. I went to a donut shop last weekend. I like chocolate iced yeast donuts, and glazed. I suspect nearly everyone else does too because they were out of those. I was even there early! All that was left was cake donuts, and some weird ones. You might think this would be obvious, but I guess not. Make lots of the popular stuff, and keep it coming. Don't bother with more than one tray each of the weird crap.

The ice cream section at the grocery store is no better. It is like finding a needle in a haystack just to get chocolate chip ice cream. I don't want freaking raw cookie dough in there, just chocolate chips. I also don't mean chocolate chip mint, just chocolate chips. I ended up buying plain vanilla, and a bag of chocolate mini-morsels.

These wild goose chases I have been on lately go to show one thing clearly: common sense is a misnomer. Sense is just not common at all. If it were, pizza buffets would make three cheeses and three pepperonis to every one pizza with weird stuff on it. Donut shops would make a lot more chocolate frosted and glazed donuts, and we could get simple chocolate chip ice cream.

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