The Pizza Post

I really like pizza. I figure I've eaten an entire football field worth of pizza in my life. That's a lot of pizza.

When I'm at home I eat pizza, when I travel I like to eat pizza. A couple weeks ago I was up in Seattle and drove an hour out of my way just for a slice from one of my all-time favorite pizza joints.

It's so hard to rank the best pizzas I've ever had. There have been so many, and like many things... context  matters. A $1 slice of backroom pizza is objectively not good pizza. But at 2 A.M. after stumbling out of The Brown Jug it seems like the tastiest pizza in the world. A slice of Giordano's deep dish after a long day walking around Chicago is hard to beat. Even eating a cold slice over the sink on the way out the door to work has it's time & place (specifically in the morning & over the sink).

I can objectively recall the worst pizza I've ever had. It was a ham pizza from a place called Habib's in Florianopolis, Brazil. The crust was floury cardboard, the sauce was the sauce from a can of spaghetti-o's, the ham was gross, and the cheese was a melted Munster-like cheese and Philadelphia cream cheese. It was atrocious. It was so bad, that I mentioned it in my post about going to Brazil. I was able to find a picture of it on their website.

I know this looks bad, but the actual pizza was much, much worse.

So instead of trying to figure out the best pizza I've had, I present the top 5 pizza places by amount I've consumed over the past 30 years.

1 - Cottage Inn Pizza - Ann Arbor, MI

When I was in school there was a Cottage Inn Pizza two blocks away. They had a $5.99 large carry-out special that would be $6.35 after taxes. I probably ordered 200 large pepperoni pizzas from Cottage Inn over the course of three years. Factor in the CIAYCELBs (Cottage-Inn-All-You-Can-Eat-Lunch-Buffet) that we would routinely frequent, and I've eaten a significant amount of Cottage Inn Pizza.

2 - Woodstock's Pizza - San Diego, CA

When we decided to buy a house in San Diego my now-wife got really excited that there was a Woodstock's Pizza nearby. I was unfamiliar with the pizza chain that exists in several university towns in California. My wife grew up eating at the one near UC Davis, and now we routinely frequent the one nearby our house that serves SDSU. Woodstock's makes a great pizza, but it's their specialty pies that really put them over the top. The only downside is that it's a bit pricy, but it's well worth it for the best pizza within city limits.

3 - Central Market Pizza - Poulsbo, WA

Central Market is a grocery store that I used to live by. They have a take-out pizza operation. Their pizza is the best pizza on this list. I long for Central Market Pizza. Their crust is downright perfect. If you're ever in Poulsbo, make a stop at central market for a slice of the Central Market Swiss and the Buffalo Chicken.

Zola is seen here enjoying a CIAYCELB with me in June 2013

4 - Costco Pizza - Nationwide

Not the best pizza, but everywhere I've been we've had Costco Pizza. There was a Costco a few miles from my high school and we used to go there often as seniors when we had open lunch. It's hard to beat the blend of quality, quantity and value from Costco Pizza. Even now, I'll sometimes head to the Costco down the street from my office to grab a slice for lunch.

5 - Hungry Howie's - Detroit Metro Area

My mom liked Hungry Howie's because they would do flavored crusts. This would actually get us as kids to eat our crusts and they were decent, albeit slightly greasy pizzas. I have fond memories of those yellow boxes of hot above-average pizza.

Honorable Mentions:

Little Caesars (The Hot & Ready was a game changer in my development as a man)

Pizza Hut (Haven't been to one in years but in my younger days I could take down their lunch buffet with ease)

Totino's Pepperoni Pizza (not a pizza place, but I've housed plenty in high school & college)

If you have a pizza place you think I should try then mail me one of their pizzas and I will eat it.

The Hardest Challange

I may be over exaggerating a bit because I'm sleep deprived form A) taking a red-eye flight home from Seattle two nights ago and B) going to Detroit last night and not getting home until 4:30am.

But dammit if I didn't accomplish a feat today that was more difficult than any other feat I've ever accomplished. To be honest though, the said feat is of course secondary to the feat where I convinced some nice lady to let me touch one of her boobies. I swear this has happened at least twice so far in my life, and it was awesome.

But back to today's feat of human endurance. Today, I, Brian Russell went 1 whole day without consuming gluten. A proud feat indeed.

It is a feat I've been considering for quite some time. For the past three years I've had a gastro-intestinal tract that at times was uncouth. I had no clue as to the source of this, but I thought that I should try and figure it out. I thought that I would maybe try to reduce my gluten intake since that was pretty much the one constant that featured in every meal I've ever eaten.

About 6 days ago I really made a determined effort to not eat gluten. On average the past 6 days I would last until about 3PM and usually would eat wheat based products 3 times each day. These were days where I was consciously trying to avoid gluten mind you. The worst was the day that I failed at 6AM by eating a sandwich.

After spending like 4 hours trying to think of foods that didn't have gluten and also didn't taste like ass I developed the strategy that I successfully deployed today. First I ate lunch (at 3pm because that's how I roll). I went to Chipotle for a salad. It's one of the few salads that I would order at a food establishment. Then came the hardest part, at 7:30pm it was time for Jeopardy and I needed something to drink. Usually if the food doesn't get me it's the beer and whiskey. But I had planned for this, and had bought the requisite items for a night of Rum & Cokes. Around 11pm it was time for dinner, so I leaned on my fallback option and got a Jimmy John's Bootleggers Club Unwrap. Neither meal was my preferred order, but it was out of sheer determination that I went through with my order. Mission Accomplished.

What's weird about how hard this was for me is that for the last 3 years I've lived with a roommate who was 'glu-tarded' and couldn't have gluten. I've watched him eat for 3 years and still have no idea how he survived. I think if I was diagnosed with gluten intolerance I would just eat gluten until I died because it is so good and delicious and everything I like is made of gluten.

The other thing that surprised me with how hard I found going one day gluten free was is that I once went an entire year without eating meat. I had no problem doing a year avoiding meat products but struggled mightily to spend even one day avoiding wheat products. I think my will power has gone downhill a bit.

Regardless I am a champion. Since I'm convinced that tomorrow I will falter, this probably won't tell me much if my gluten dependent diet is in any way tied to my indigestion problems. But I'm still proud of myself.

Who would be friends with me? I hate everyone and everything seems stupid to me.

What a perfect title for a post. After I got everyone thinking I've gone emo with my past two posts I decided to drop some Randal Graves on everybody's asses. I was only sad faced because everyone would be switching onto Daylight Savings Time and I would no longer be special. So perk up bitches, and welcome to the world of extra daylight!

So tonight's post will not be about how awesome DST is. It will be about how if the world gives you no friends you go out and hire a friend.

I was the first University of Michigan grad that our organization had ever hired. Soon after coming on board (employer pun) I looked around and saw a bunch of ohio state shit and was disgusted. I decided that I needed backup and realized I needed another U of M grad. So I went back to Michigan, found one that had strong legs and good pad level and hired the shit out him.

Quickly our appreciation for being smarter than everyone else became apparent. You see, most days people would go around and ask if anyone wanted to grab lunch at one of the local food joints down the road. It was always a crapshoot if people had brought their lunches or not, and there was no way to determine if people were going out on any given day. So we decided to develop a quick and simple way to know whether we would pack a lunch or go out to eat. But the trick was that we wanted to keep it varied and not always go out on the same days every week. We came up with the Prime Number Eating Schedule (PNES). Everyday which is a prime number we go out to eat.

It ends up breaking down really well.

Days 1-10: 4

Days 11-20: 4

Days 21-31: 3

It is possible to get the unlucky week where the 24th is a Monday, but there is only one of those weeks between now and September 2012. I double checked that with one of those idiot savants who memorize calendars. For the most part it's a pretty good system, because I can look at my watch and know whether or not to pack a lunch, and I know that my someone else is doing the same thing. That's the Michigan Difference.

Doesn't taste half bad

When I was a kid my dad held the firm belief that you could put anything into Mac and Cheese. We had it all, and most of it was pretty good. I remember eating Mac and Cheese with all sorts of things in it including, peas, hot dogs, green pepper, ranch dip, onion, coleslaw, and summer sausage, just to name a few. I distinctly remember one time having Mac and Cheese with a can of baked beans mixed in. I don't have any explanation to why that couldn't have been just a side dish (also, not so good). Once as a kid I combined my two favorite foods, Oreo's and mustard. It was then that I found out that two good things don't necessarily combine to form something better.

One of the nice things about being in Chicago this summer is that I can cook in a kitchen that isn't in the Box house. I thought that I would be making great dinners. My cubiclemate always tells me about the dinners he made the previous night; Beef Enchiladas, Chicken Parmigiana, Beef Wellington. I tell him what I ate for dinner: Spaghetti with Prego, Michelinas, Cereal. He says that I just eat college food, and he is probably right.

One of my main staples is grilled cheese. I might eat between 6-8 grilled cheese's a week. Mostly, I love sprucing up my grilled cheese with whatever is in the fridge. You know what I have found? Every sauce tastes good on a grilled cheese. Some variations I have tried include, Tabasco, mustard (sans Oreo), ketchup, BBQ, onion dip, other cheese, pogs, Russian dressing, horseradish and a few others. They were all delicious. I would suggest next time you sit down to cook up a cheeser, you grab whatever sauce or salad dressing you have in the fridge and slop it on.

Happy Cheesing!

Quickie Burger: Outlook Good

Without the competent workforce of Dlowe, Tubbys closed down at the end of fall semester. It was probably for the best, seeing as there are 7 other places that sell subs at the Hill-State-Packard area. It is being replaced by this:


Yes, it's a cleavage laden blond holding a stein of beer while her other hand grasps the reins to the burger she is riding bareback while condiments spew out the rear. That is awesome.

P.S. It looks like she has the boots with the *Spur*
I kill myself sometimes.