The Topping Whisperer

The Mild Wife and I don't usually order out take-out food, especially not during the pandemic. Since we don't really go out to eat or get lunch at the office any more, we basically have to cook our own meals. Mind you, we tend to enjoy this process quite a bit, so it's not exactly a hardship. Still, the point is that we tend to cook our own meals most of the time.

That implies two things, though. One, we do actually order out on rare occasions. Two, it is a treat whenever we do so, precisely because it happens so infrequently. I'm sure others have seen this phenomenon, as well, but it's the same basic reason why our weekly drive feels like a fun outing these days. There's a bit of novelty attached to an activity when you don't do it all that often.

One of our favorites when we do order take-out is pizza. It's a quick, simple order, and it's a hearty meal (the two main staples on any pizza slice are bread and cheese). It's not quite a pizza party like the Mild Wife jokes about, but it does serve as an enjoyable meal for the two of us.

The other toppings are up to us, and that's where the fun for this post begins. We can pick some of the pre-packaged options, but since we're treating the pizza-purchasing experience like a novelty, we usually end up picking our topping combinations. Even at the base layer, there are all manners of sauces; pesto and chipotle are not ones I'd expect to see on a pizza, for example. So, we get creative and play with our order.

So far, I seem to have had the most luck with new combinations (they are, at the very least, new to us). For example, I ordered a pesto, chicken, and artichoke hearts combination that we really enjoyed when we bit into it. I don't quite know what drove me to choose those items in that combination, but I did. I wouldn't even consider it a particularly strange combination, but it was different from our usual. The Mild Wife was a big fan of that, and we have tucked that combination away for further reference. I guarantee you that is not the last pizza that we will order with that combination of ingredients.

After at least a couple of these winning combinations, though, I joked to the Mild Wife that I have become the Topping Whisperer. Clearly, I had some secret connection to the kitchen gods that allowed me to choose new combinations of pizza toppings that were especially tasty. It's a super power, I tell you.

Of course, as if to laugh at my expense, karma made sure to make its presence known the next time I chose toppings. Maybe I got a little cocky, maybe the batch of ingredients was off, but it wasn't quite the hit that I had hoped for. You see, I expanded my zone even more than usual, and I tried to make a taco-flavored pizza. I chose ground beef, fresh tomatoes, and a chipotle sauce. Now, in my mind, that sounded a little bit like a taco, so I hoped my streak of winning combinations would continue.

Nope.

It tasted okay, and there was nothing bad about the pizza. It just wasn't a big hit like the others had been. The Mild Wife and I even had a discussion about what we thought could have made it better, but we both knew that it was not one of our more stellar options. I had reached too high for the sun, and the rays had melted my wings.

The Mild Wife had a good chuckle as she told me, "they can't all be winners." Well, that's all well and good, but I'm certainly going to try to get my batting average back up. I'd like to get back into Topping Whisperer territory.