That's a LOT of Pizza

My brother Joe says that his family has a joke. After they share a huge home-cooked meal, someone will push themselves back from the table, look around and say, “Well, should we order a pizza?”

Nora and her friend Ben and their dog, Finnegan, were the first to arrive. I had some meals planned including Pumpkin Lasagna, roasted chicken and homemade rosemary stuffing, as well as beef tenderloin on Christmas Eve. Pizza take-out seemed like a good idea for one evening. We needed a night out because we were not as ready for Christmas as we had hoped, there was still a lot of shopping and wrapping to do. So, we ordered pizza from Bazbeau’s one evening. The kids were happy to drive down and pick it up. The Bazbeau’s in Broadripple is a favorite haunt of theirs. When I first went to Bazbeaus for pizza, we were new to Indianapolis. The restaurant was in a converted house…including the garage with the door that opened up to the back yard in the summer. My first introduction to a bucket of beer, Amstdel Light, and barbeque chicken pizza. They moved into a fancier building, but the pizza is still good.

We also had pizza on Christmas day. Can you believe it? We spent the day eating at the Hertel’s beginning with variety of appetizers and continuing on to a dinner that included. Barbeque pork, roast beef, macaroni and cheese, mashed potatoes, green beans, chicken salad, chicken and noodles, warm rolls and fresh bread…(and salads that I’m not even going to begin to list). Dessert also included Christmas cookies, and candy with everybody contributing their favorites. By the time we got home from Batesville, Mollie, Joel and the other kids decided that they were hungry again. No pizzerias open! After calling around, the men went out and came back with Red Baron frozen pizzas. Joel spent about 10 minutes prying the pepperoni and sausage off of one half of a pizza so that Mollie, the resident vegetarian, could eat it. It wasn’t home made, but it was what they needed.

I didn’t expect to eat pizza again until 2010, but a trip to Milwaukee early in the week found us in Balistreri’s an Italian restaurant across the street from our old house. We arrived early enough that we could go there for dinner. Mike and I shared a half order of their deep fried eggplant strips (served with marinara sauce). We also ordered one of the popular thin-crust pizzas that we enjoyed so much when we lived in Milwaukee. We looked around the restaurant expecting to see someone we knew, no luck there, but Mike and I shared some special memories. We parked across the street from the old house and looked at it wondering how we ever managed to park two cars in that driveway?

Thought that was that…but our visit to Mike’s uncle Chuck and aunt Ellie in Watertown Wisconsin found them carrying the Papa Murphy’s pizza in the house as we pulled into their driveway.

Well, so, tonight, (New Year’s Eve) should we order a pizza?