After months of eating keto to drop some fat, I am back to eating carbs. I’m trying not to go crazy and to keep my intake of calories something reasonable, but, yeah, carbs baby.
I don’t eat a lot of sweet stuff, so I’m lucky there. No cokes/sodas or big desserts. Dark chocolate–like a square from the Trader Joe’s Pound Plus bar will usually do the trick. On special occasions, cheesecake made with less sugar and more lemon, on a not cookie crust; or dark chocolate pot de crème.
Ice cream, though… now there is a weakness and one which I inherited from my father. Dad had ice cream every night, usually french vanilla, with a Peppridge Farm chocolate chip cookie. I skip the cookie but, damn, I can eat some ice cream. I got myself some today, on my way home after sangha. Rather than wait for after dinner, I politely but immediately weighed out a serving of the mint chocolate goodness. I ate it slowly, mindfully, and it was lovely.
When I decided to eat carbs again, the first thing I thought of was my sourdough bread. I took care of that with a bake on Friday. The second thing I thought of was, surprisingly, not ice cream but rather pizza. Homemade pizza. The ice cream I bought was an impulse. The pizza, a plan.
I bought mozzarella the last time I went to the grocery. When I was with the ex, I would get provolone too, but I didn’t want to have any of the cheese go to waste so I stuck with the Mozz and skipped the other.
I had everything else in house: 00 flour and yeast, tomato paste in the freezer, mushrooms and prosciutto from the last Costco trip, a can of artichoke hearts from Trader Joe’s from who knows how long ago in my cupboard, and arugula, a staple I always have.
I made the dough this morning. It spent the day doing its second proof in the fridge. In the early evening, as I took the rolling rack out of my insanely expensive and pretentious Wolf oven to pre-heat the stone on the lowest rack, it hit me: this is the first post-Ex pizza.
I keep finding firsts. I’m not sure I like them.
I would never have the Wolf if it weren’t for the Ex. The Viking that was in the house when we bought it was dying and when we replaced it he pushed for the high-end. And the griddle. And the pizza stone that came with a peel. All upgrades he decided we had to have. So, pizza makes me think of him.
Being a Type 1 diabetic, regular pizza was verbotten, but he loved it. I found a good replacement flour (King Arthur keto flour) and made a passable crust for him. So, the pizza stone (etc.) was for him. So was the whole very expensive stove and oven. But I certainly appreciated all of it.
I insisted on paying for half the cost. We got a Bosch fridge at the same time. The total was more than I made as a graduate student.. for a whole year. I was arguably ill spending that much money when we easily could have gotten away with spending 30% of that…or less. It was huge for me. But I couldn’t not share the cost. That is who I am.
To be clear: I love the stove. I’m glad he pushed for it. I never would have done it.
Anyway, today, I made the pizza and used the stone and the peel and, damn, the result was fabulous. Worth every carb.
