Oh, I am such a foody! I love eating. It’s one of the most pleasurable activities that I know of. As soon as I’ve finished eating one meal, I’m planning the next one. I often have meals planned three or four days in advance.
On the flip side, my other half couldn’t care less about food. He views it as a necessity for staying alive. On the one hand this means I can place pretty much anything in front of him and he’ll eat it, but it also means that when I ask him what he fancies eating, he just laughs at me. He eats one meal a day while I like my full three meals a day and three snacks… and if any of those meals can be three courses, then so much the better!
Our food habits are completely incompatible. Despite not really caring about food, he does have a preference for very strong flavours, he covers his food in black pepper and chilli sauce, while I like to think of myself as having a delicate palate, (also occasionally referred to as bland, but I don’t agree with that insult, not at all). In Nandos, for example, he goes with the hottest flavouring and uses the hot sauce from the scary little black bottle with the evil red X, while I opt for the no flavour option and find the garlic bread a little spicy. But we do have some compromises such as chip shop curry sauce. He loves smelly mouldy cheese and I like soft brie and mild cheddar, but we both love Feta. He puts fresh chilli on pizza while I favour his much loathed mushrooms… but we both love pepperoni.
Our food differences mean that we eat an awful lot of takeaway, and we tend to prefer going to restaurants that present us with a buffet, so we can eat as much or as little of whatever we want. It’s not that I can’t cook, or that I don’t like cooking, it’s just that most of my adventurous dishes are time consuming and make a lot of mess, and require ingredients like mushrooms, tomatoes or pretty much any kind of vegetable, that he won’t eat. I have little motivation to spend hours slaving over a cooker to present him with a dish that he’ll eat with the same amount of appreciation as he would tuck into something I took out the freezer and slammed into the oven 20 minutes earlier.
Pizza is like the food of the Gods! – Olivia Jones
If it was up to me, I’d probably just order pizza every night. It has the perfect blend of carbohydrate, protein and vegetables. Okay it might exceed a person’s fat intake, but it tastes so good. When I was at university we had this coupon card for a pizza delivery place that gave us a huge discount on everything we ordered. So we pretty much lived off pizza for 12 months. That’s probably why I still eat so much of it now. Like most human bodies are 60% water, I’m pretty sure that as a result of that year at university, my body weight is at least 30% pizza, so I need to keep topping it up, on at least a weekly basis, to ensure I function. The other 70% of my body weight is almost certainly tea.
It’s funny how your first memory of something sets it in stone as the ultimate version of that thing. I remember the first time I ate pizza. It was in a Pizzaland in Liverpool with my sister. I remember going to Pizza Hut and complaining about the thick base and garlic bread slices, because they were the complete opposite of the way Pizzaland served them and Pizzaland was the best.
I was so disappointed when it closed down. The closest I’ve found to Pizzaland is probably Pizza Express. Perhaps it’s just the thin base that I like, but I’m not convinced I’ve tasted anything as good as Pizzaland pizza and sadly now, I will never be able to compare it and find out. Pizzaland lives on in my memory as the ultimate pizza. But I’m a big fan of Pizza Express. I love that it feels like a posh restaurant, rather than a big chain fast food place like Pizza Hut or even my beloved Pizzaland did. And the pizzas are beautiful.
American Pizza Slice in Liverpool City Centre and Waterloo, is a pretty good contender for the best pizza though, with a base so thin it almost falls apart under the sheer weight of its toppings. It’s definitely a gourmet pizza that must have a secret ingredient somewhere along the way, because I’ve never tasted anything like it anywhere else. If you live in Liverpool, you’ll know what I mean.
The Waterfront in Streatham (London) also does a really good fresh pizza. I’ve not tasted anything like that either, interesting toppings and they serve cocktails too, so that makes for a pretty awesome night out, there’s also The Duck in Clapham that does a Peking duck pizza which is a thing of beauty.
Okay so this post seems to be descending into an unintended review of pizza takeaways. Like my novel writing, I started with an idea and found myself accidentally on a different path. I like it though, I’m going to keep going and see where it takes me.
So, Just-Eat is a pretty big deal in our house. Unfortunately we don’t live in the delivery zone for American Pizza Slice (and our favourite Chinese restaurant doesn’t deliver but it’s okay, it’s in walking distance). Our favourite delivery takeaway is Sizzlas on County Road. Anyone that regularly goes to the football will know Sizzlas. They’re a mixed bag of pizza, Indian food, kebabs and burgers. They do the best garlic bread and cheese ever made (although that may be because it comes free with orders over £12. There’s something about free food – it just tastes better). We do have a bad habit of over ordering just to hit the £12 total. I once ordered and paid for a GB&C because I was on my own and couldn’t possibly justify ordering £12 worth of food for myself, but it wasn’t nearly as good as the free one. Weird.
Sizzlas solves a lot of our food problems – he can get his Chicken Madras and I can eat my pizza. Annoyingly the garlic bread and cheese is also something we agree on. Which I’m sometimes a little gutted about!
So what’s your favourite takeaway? Any pizza recommendations for me? Share them below.
If I had to choose one food to eat everyday it would be pizza.
