So it's Super Bowl Sunday, and that means that places like Domino's, Pizza Hut, Papa John's and every local pizza place will be jam packed with orders, deliveries and irate customers wanting their eats before kickoff at around 6:18 ET.  Myself, I make my own pizza, as described in this post, to avoid the pricey costs of pizza and wings, and to know that it will be made exactly the way I want it, from the dough to the sauce, right down to the toppings.

Of course, with cooking at home, there are always pitfalls, pratfalls and unexpected difficulties that are prone to appearing when we least want them to.  For example, here in Missouri, pepperoni is not nearly what I am used to.  Back in Buffalo, pepperoni is actual quality sausage, that curls as the pizza cooks, releasing a little bit of grease and a flavor that can't be described any other way than as a necessity to good pizza. 

Chain places don't deal with this, going with a pizza sausage that they pass as pepperoni.  It is basically heat resistant, as it looks the same when the cooking process as it did when it went in.  The flavor is extremely weak, and there is no grease emitted from it.  It's almost like packing foam:  it's there, but you really don't want to eat it. 

Knowing that I wanted to make pizza for the Super Bowl, but not wanting to suffer through another disappointment in the toppings foray, I made a bold decision.  If I couldn't get the pepperoni I wanted here, I would obviously have to undertake a different route.  I called my dad, who still lives in West Seneca, about fifteen minutes outside of the city, and explained to him my dilemma. 

After overcoming his shock and obvious disdain for the so called "pizza sausage" that is available here, he agreed to go out and grab some real Margherita stick pepperoni and send it out.  That was last week.  I spoke with him Wednesday, and he had sent it out Tuesday morning.  Needless to say, that was a relief and a positive, since I was low on options otherwise, not to mention funds to rectify the situation if necessary. 

Friday morning, after grabbing breakfast, taking Tina to work, and grabbing a few things at Wal-mart that we needed to get through for the week, I returned home to find a box sitting at my front door.  It was a priority mail delivery from my father.  I went inside, opened it up, and was pleased to find eight sticks of the Margherita pepperoni we in New York are so found of.  For those of you who haven't had the real deal, I urge you to go and find it, put it on a pizza and try it yourself. 

So, even though I know he is en route to Florida for a month, I want to take a second to say thanks, Dad, for following through on that and getting me something I needed when I needed it.  You probably don't know how important it actually was.

As a self admitted pizza connoisseur, I do my best to try and test out pizza places as I get the chance to peruse them.  Now, granted, no chain place is going to match up to places like Imperial, Bocce's and Maria's back in Western New York, or to my own that I make in the kitchen, but occasionally, we sample the major chain fare, either because we don't want to go through the labor of making our own, or we just want something quick and easy.

Papa John's is usually our top choice here, as they have not disappointed in the times we have dealt with them.  On rarer occasions, we go with Domino's, if for no other reason than I like their cheesy bread.  Then that leaves the remaining big chain, Pizza Hut.  I won't discuss Imo's because a) I don't like cracker thin crust, and b) I don't know how national they are, while the other ones I mentioned are more, shall we say, mainstream. 

Now, in between a stint at college and before joining the military, I worked at a Pizza Hut, back in Fredonia, for about 16 months.  Back then, I didn't mind their fare, because a) I was getting paid to work there, and b) it was free.  I would take home a pizza, some cheesesticks doctored the way I wanted them, either with pepperoni or bacon, or both, and a two liter a couple times a week as compensation for sticking around past the end of my scheduled shift. 

At that time, it was the spawn of the stuffed crust pizza and the short lived triple decker, which was a thin crust with a six cheese blend covered by a second thin crust, this one with a hole cut in the center, and then topped with whatever toppings that were wanted.  The stuffed crust is still around today, the triple decker went the way of Crystal Pepsi, a good premise, but not something that caught the majority of the public.

Now, in the era of everyone under the sun having deals on cheap pizza, Pizza Hut has their latest addition to the fray, the Pizza Mia! pizza.  Pizza Hut bills the Pizza Mia! as being made with whole milk mozzarella cheese with a hint of cheddar and vine ripened California tomatoes.  Plus, if you buy three or more one topping ones, they are five bucks apiece.  Of course, this is the same as Domino's, Little Caesars and the rest, but who cares?  With them being low on the food chain for me, I hadn't tried one.  That changed last week.

Tina went and babysat our niece Sabrina, since Kate had class.  We both want to see her graduate, and Tina doesn't mind the watching of the little one, so everything was settled.  After she returned, some four and a half hours later, with profuse thanks of course, she also came bearing the remnants of two of these Pizza Mia! pizzas. Since I was hungry, and hadn't cooked dinner since I wasn't sure of her return time, I decided to test it out.  That turned out to be a bona fide disappointment.

For starters, it was not a standard Pizza Hut pizza.  The crust was not a thin, nor was it the pan pizza that Pizza Hut has been famous for.  It didn't even resemble any pizza that I have ever had from there.  Second, the cheese was skimpy.  If I order a pizza, I expect to see a full blown, uniform layer of cheese across the pizza from crust to crust.  This looked like what scientists predict the ozone layer looks like:  blotchy and full of holes.  The sauce was extremely weak as well.  I prefer, oh, flavor when it comes to my sauce, and that means spices:  garlic, oregano, basil, fennel, sage, onion powder, parsley, etc.  This was basically like someone opened a can of tomato sauce you buy at Walmart for 58 cents or whatever the price is, and poured it on the pizza. 

There is and has been far too much hype about the Pizza Mia for it to be as poor as it was.  Perhaps there are people out there who enjoy bland, subpar pizza.  I am not one of them, and I have to say that there was far more hype than taste in the product.  I won't go out of my way to order one myself, as if I am going to shell out cash, it should be for something that meets the standards I am looking for. 

Rule of thumb says that if you are going to be successful in life, you need the proper tools.  The same goes in the kitchen.  If you are going to cook pasta, it helps to have a good sized pot and a colander among your resources.  When it comes to bread or meat, it helps to have a good knife to cut through it, unless you plan on going caveman style and just trying to rip chunks off with your teeth.

Right before Thanksgiving, after consulting with Tina, I decided to pick up a Hamilton Beach electric knife.  Two months later, I have to say it was one of the best investments I have made in quite some time.  They are very economical, (I think the one I bought was $14 or somewhere close at Walmart), and are extremely versatile.   I used it to carve the turkey on Thanksgiving, and since have used it to slice arm and sirloin tip roasts, chicken, various types of bread that I make, and, pictured below, a nice four and a half pound pork tenderloin that was cut for me by my butcher, Jeff, down at Farmington Meats. 

The Hamilton Beach electric knife comes complete with the base, two blades that hook together, a meat fork, and a case to store it in.  There also is a plastic sleeve to put over the blades to prevent them from slicing a finger or doing damage to them.  All you have to do to make it work is put the blades together, lock them into the base, and plug it in.  Then press the button and cut away...when you get to the end of the piece you are cutting, let off the button and the knife stops.  When you finish, unplug the knife first, then press the eject button to dislodge the blades from the base for snap clean up. 

Considering how time consuming using a regular blade can be, not to mention the unwieldiness of a large knife at precarious angles, one would be extremely remiss to not have one of these in their kitchen.  If you are serious about cooking, be it for work, to impress family, friends or a date, or just to make sure you have a good meal, be smart.  Have the right equipment.  Pick up a Hamilton Beach electric knife today and try it out for yourself.  I know that I wouldn't give mine up. 

Everyone knows that in order to cook successfully, you need to have access to several things:  the proper ingredients for what you are going to make, the recipe to follow, and of course, the equipment to put it together.  From breads to pizza, cookies to cakes, mashed potatoes and many more of your staples of existence, you need a mixer. 

I have a Cuisinart hand mixer that, of course, is in storage with everything else, as I detailed in my last post.  In the interim, I picked up an old Sunbeam stand mixer that has seen better decades.  Only one beater actually fits in the mixer, if you try two, they jam up and fail to spin properly.  You can imagine what a pain this can be when you are trying to combine massive amounts of ingredients.

So, imagine how thrilled I was to find out that there was a contest, where the prize is one of the snappy new mixers from Hamilton Beach.  Putting one of those to work would make life a breeze in the kitchen. 

A Cowboy’s Wife is having a contest on her food blog! You can win a Hamilton Beach® Stand Mixer and she’ll ship anywhere so everyone is eligible!

One can only hope that somehow my name comes up down the pipe and I can claim this mixer.  I cook far too much to have to spend time fighting with the archaic equipment available, and of course, the financial outlay for new stuff.

As this is the initial post here on Ogle Food, I figured I would start it off with something that I enjoy quite a bit when it comes to food:  pizza.

Pizza and wings are a staple where I come from back in Western New York.  The Anchor Bar is the home of the chicken wing, and you can't go more than a couple of blocks without finding someplace that has wings.  When it comes to pizza, there are some names back home that are proverbial institutions in the area:  Bocce's, Imperial, Carbone's, Doctor's and La Nova within the city limits, Maria's, and Blasdell.  Mention a chain place like Pizza Hut or Domino's and prepare for some backlash, criticism and good old fashioned ridicule.

Since we moved here nearly two and a half years ago, save for a trip home last March, good quality pizza has fallen by the wayside.  Here in St. Louis, they go with the cracker thin crust at places like Imo's.  Totally not my style, I prefer a SOLID pizza that has some weight, flavor and toppings, not something that looks as if it were run over by a steamroller.

That means that I had to put my culinary talents to work and start crafting my own pizza.  I am used to making my own sauce for pasta and realized that it could just as easily be used for pizza construction.  I use tomato sauce, paste, puree, sugar, garlic, oregano, sage, parsley, Italian seasoning, and any other spices I have handy to mix in, usually basil and fennel if I have it.  It usually sits and cooks for several hours, letting all the flavors meld together, filling the apartment with the smells of little Italy.

The dough was a little tougher to come by initially.  In New York, we had a bread maker, so I used the recipe that was in the bread maker book, and in an hour and twenty minutes, I had dough.  When we moved, the bread maker went into storage with everything else, where it still sits.  That meant I had to improvise. 

I stumbled across this recipe for pizza dough one day when searching on the net, and have used it ever since.  It makes a 16" and a 12" pizza out of the one batch, and it has a wonderful texture.  You can add spices, or perhaps some shredded cheese, into the dough after you mix in the first cup of flour and olive oil.  Experiment to make it exactly how you want it.  Variety is the spice of life, and it is especially true with pizza.  I like to have sausage, pepperoni, bacon, basically whatever kind of meat I can put together on my pizza.  Tina likes pepperoni in moderation, but leans toward peppers, onions and chicken.

I leave you with a look at tonight's dinner, tomorrow's snack, a completely balanced meal, a perfect circle, and to borrow a quote from Alton Brown, Good Eats.