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On Pizza

I was just talking to someone the other day about how I'm usually very willing to play with my diet. This is how I ended up eating vegetarian meals (and occasionally regretting it) and how I ended up getting a dirty look over tofu. As I quickly discovered, though, I am decidedly in the minority when it comes to food. And as it turns out, this has often led to quite a few laughs over food.

The one item where this is the most noticeable is pizza. Sure, everyone has their preferences about certain food; I know people who don't eat seafood, people who don't eat meat, people who only eat Chinese food, people who don't eat dairy ... you get the idea. But because pizza has so many options, people's preferences very quickly come out.

My Chinese grandmother was one a perfect example of this. She was one of those people that pretty much only ever wanted to eat Chinese food (my friends can confirm that this is not an isolated occurrence among other Chinese elders). I wouldn't have ever taken her to a steak house for dinner, say. However, the one item of non-Chinese food she seemed to genuinely enjoy was a Hawaiian-style pizza. I had no idea why this was the case, but that's how it went. We discovered this fact once when my cousin worked at a pizza place, and he brought one over for her to try. Surprisingly, she loved it. It was not the last Hawaiian pizza she would consume.

Now, half the fun in getting a pizza is figuring out what toppings to add. In some cases, though, the amusing part is in what toppings are subtracted from the pizza. I was once tasked with bringing some pizza over to a Mild Ex'es house after work, so I stopped off a pizza place near the office. In order to make things simple, I got some of the pre-made combination pizzas: one was more or less a meat lover's style pizza, and the other had barbecue chicken on it. Everyone ate their fill, but the Mild Ex would later confide that, I "got the fancy pizza with all that stuff on it. Pizza's supposed to be plain." I had inadvertently screwed up by getting, um, toppings on the pizza. I had a good hearty chuckle about that.

Still, that's nothing compared to a couple of my high school friends. If the no-toppings rule is odd, they've got one that's even better: no cheese, one topping. I'm not kidding. They will order a pizza with no cheese on it, and perhaps some pepperoni. It tastes ... interesting. Most of the time, I will happily gorge myself on pizza, but I usually have second thoughts if there are only slices of their pizza left. The person who takes the order usually does a double-take, too. The conversation usually involves the phrase, "just bread, tomato sauce, and pepperoni?" at some point. It's actually kind of funny to watch.

So with all that said, I'm kind of craving some pizza now. Heck, I might even invite a few friends over just to see what kind of toppings they do and don't order on their pizza.

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