Last Sunday was Pizzageddon. This doesn’t mean that cheese and tomato sauce fell from the sky in dollops to crush government buildings and places of worship and all-you-can-eat Pizza Hut buffets, signaling the displeasure of some vengeful Neapolitan god — there is nothing religious about Pizzageddon, or at least not theistic. Rather, Pizzageddon is the ultimate pizza cook-off, at which different teams try to assemble the most delicious pie, and a winner is chosen by secret ballot. It takes place in my kitchen, and the rule this time around — for there have been many Pizzageddons — was that my wife (an ace baker) would supply the homemade dough, but the teams were responsible for all toppings, including sauce.

Pizzageddon is part of a larger custom in my family, which we have given the more modest name of Pizza Sundays, and which simply involves us making pizza, from scratch, every Sunday evening. We often make the immodest joke that Pizza Sundays is the greatest tradition in the history of the universe, and although that may be pushing it a little, it gives our friends and us something to look forward to every week, a good excuse to gather, talk about food, and share a reliably delicious meal.

The Slow Food movement has emphasized the value of taking time to appreciate your food, and to learn what its proponents call “taste education,” which aims “to retrain the senses and sharpen perception” in order to better understand the role food plays in society. The focus is on acknowledging the links between food, place, and culture, with a balance between pleasure and knowledge — of local cuisines, biodiversity, and food’s connection to the environment — and on reintroducing an idea of eating that provides a counterpoint to the mass production, instant gratification, and fat-and-sodium obsession that fuels the fast food industry. One key ingredient in the recipe for conscious eating, however, is much simpler and more intuitive than drawing a flow chart to assess the impact your Thai beef salad has on global ecosystems. It has to do with cooking, and eating, as a ritual. (more…)

Tags: food, pizza, recipe
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