Pizza that smells like body odor...

That's what I had for supper tonight, and I enjoyed each morsel of it. Kate purchased a Shaw's pizza dough, something I do fairly often, and decided to give this whole quick pizza recipe a whirl. Of course what Kate did not know, and what I should have told her, is that you need a little bit of flour for your hands when you are preparing the dough. With a lack of flour, we decided to use "Italian Seasoned Bread Crumbs". At the time this seemed like a nice idea. It removed the "stick" factor from the dough, and added seasoning.

So after the sauce, cheese and toppings were added the pizza was shoved into the oven. The required 12 minutes went by and I checked on it... and it barely looked cooked at all.. "Kate, is this oven even on?" I asked, a little incredulously. "Oops, I only have it on warm!" Replied Kate.

An additional 12 minutes floats by and once again Kate checks on the pizza. The cheese doesn't look crispy yet, and there is a puddle on top of the pizza. Apparently the peppers on top overwhelmed it. That was totally my bad.... I said a lot of peppers wouldn't be a problem. In reality, that many probably should have been cooked a bit to remove some of their moisture.
We decided to stick the pizza in for another few minutes.

Any way at this time I noticed a salty sort of smell. It was about this time when Kate's roommate Joanne came in to prepare her self supper. Not wanting to draw attention to the smell I didn't say anything.

This time we took the pizza out and it looked nice. Unfortunately it looks like the pizza pan may not have had enough oil, and/or was not seasoned enough. The dough was stuck to the pan in a couple of spots. A puddle remained on top of the pizza, but this was of no concern to me. I was hungry and melted mozzarella cheese is almost always good. So, after Kate & I have consumed about half of the pizza... and Joanne has retreated to the living room, Kate whispers "Do you smell B.O.?"
"It's not me!" I defensively reply, once again smelling my self in an attempt to reassure my beliefs.
"Do you think its....?"Kate starts to say,
"I think its the pizza...." I interrupt.
"Oh" Kate sullenly responds. This depresses Kate as she feels responsible for this strange occurrence.... which she in no way was.
"I don't want any more" Kate says
"What? It still tastes good!" I put another piece into my plate.
"Do you want to take it home with you?" Kate responds with a bit of sarcasm...
Of course I respond with a shrug "Sure, Why not?"
I go on to explain my theory about the Italian bread crumbs being the culprit. I take out the crumbs and give them another sniff and pass them to Kate. It sort of stunk in the same way that an Italian Sandwich can stink after getting warm in a lunch box all day... except in this case it was getting baked into the air.
Later I realized that the smell had permeated the entire apartment. It really is quite funny in hindsight, or at least I think so. Kate, much like myself had initially thought the smell was Joanne. It didn't take too much time for us to unfortunately realize our supper was the source of the unpleasant odor. Ahhh well... what are you going to do?

Kate gave me "The Amityville Horror" by Jay Anson to read after I whined that my mp3 player battery would likely lose its charge on the way back to Melrose. Its pretty good and a fast read too. I'm already on page 50. I suppose I'm a sucker for things like ghost stories so it draws me in.

There was a great article on Boston.com today about the 30th Anniversary of the Hancock building's completion in Back Bay and it's history. I knew that the project was an engineering disaster... but I didn't know quite to what extent. I guess this may have contributed heavily to the hub's sour attitude towards high rises.

Hancock at 30, Behind the Looking Glass

Only recently is Boston really beginning to catch up with several new sky-scraper projects in the works. The most notable a 1000 foot tower going downtown which will likely be 70-80 stories, and replace Hancock's status as the highest building in the Northeast U.S.

One bidder for 1000-foot tower site in Boston

Lastly I wanted to mention how pissed off I am that the GOP is stupid enough to vote Trent Lott back into a seat of power. It was Soooo close too. Lamar Alexander lost by 1 vote, a political moderate... not a old cog with racist tendencies.
Lott succeeds in leadership comeback

Please excuse any growing pains my blog has been having, I switched over to a new formatter and I've had a couple of glitches. I'm trying to work on some long over due items such as refining the format & organizing my side bar better.