How to reduce your guilt – with pizza!

Hi gals!

First off let me just acknowledge the fact that I’ve not blogged or posted anything in darn near 10 months. How have you been eating while I was away? I feel JUST AWFUL. GUILTY, even!

You may have noticed a little foreshadowing in my earlier paragraph, because today’s recipe involves GUILT REDUCTION and PIZZA! I know I know, you’re probably saying, “But I should always feel guilt when I eat pizza and also when I put my own needs ahead of others!” Listen ladies, not ANYMORE. I discovered the secret walking down the only section of Trader Joe’s I visit besides the sample station – the frozen food aisle. I was, myself, feeling guilty. I was strolling listlessly along, wrapped up on my own self loathing, when I saw it, the answer to my problems tucked between the frozen pancakes and the shrimp popovers – Reduced Guilt Pizza!

It was a sign from above! I snatched up the whole inventory and then ran to the register and ran back and put all but one back, remembering that my freezer is packed with empty ice trays and half eaten freezer burnt ice ream from 2010!  Only room for one serving of guilt reduction this time around!

I got home and begun the process of reducing my guilt – here are the steps:

1. Preheat your oven to 400 degrees

2. Panic! You’ve forgotten that sometimes you store things in the oven! Run to the oven and open it. Relief, all that is there is the burned on sludge from last year’s failed pumpkin pie.

3. Wait 20 minutes, wonder what that gas smell is, and why your oven is not hot, then find that the pilot light is out.

4. Open some windows to let the gas out of your shitbox apartment so you don’t explode when you relight your pilot light.

5. Track down some matches from the last dump of a bar you were at.

6. Light the pilot light.

7. Repeat steps 1 and 3 (sans gas smell – if there is still a gas smell write yourself a note to tell your landlord tomorrow that you need lower rent because this broken oven is preventing you from cooking delicious and nutritious meals for 4 every night and you want answers! )

8.Once the oven is hot enough for guilt torching,  unwrap the pizza and slap it on one of the racks.

9. Trader Joe’s recommends cooking this pizza for 12-14 minutes. Laugh to yourself, you don’t need a timer – you are a savvy woman in the kitchen whose women’s intuition will tell her when that fucking pizza is done!

10. Begin to pace because you’re starving!  That Lean Cuisine burrito at 11 am was not enough to sustain you this long.

11. Clean out the crumbs in the sink from last night’s dinner while you wait. Everyone loves a woman who multi tasks!

12. Open the oven when your timer goes off to check the pizza. Make sure it is fully cooked, or if your oven is similar to mine, it will have a nice char on one side, and be still completely frozen on the other.  Ta-da!

13. Be sure to be safe when pulling the pizza out! Grab the nearest piece of cloth – in my situation I used half a roll of paper towels, but you can use anything that will keep your hands from fuzing to the oven rack –  and wrap your hands fully in the cloth or the paper towels.

14. Shake the rack till the pizza falls on to your other waiting  hand .  If it falls on the floor or onto the pumpkin sludge,  don’t worry. Just pick it up and dust off as needed.

15. Realize you left your pizza cutter with the man running for the local mayor’s face on it at your last shitbox apartment and pick it up as is because dammit, you are starving AND guilty!

16. Stand over the sink, and hold the pizza with two hands as if it were a sandwich.

17. Begin eating the pizza. Eat the whole damn thing- it’s guilt reduction after all!

18. Begin to think about all the times you’ve put your needs before others and the guilt and shame that came from it! Wait for it all to melt away.

19. Realize you’re not feeling the guilt melt away, rather the roof of your mouth being burned on the charred side of the pizza. Move over to the frozen side to help soothe the burn.  Hmm…..might take a few minutes for the guilt melting to kick in.

20. Finish the pizza and sit on the couch, and realize you feel bad for being lazy and sitting on the couch and consuming a whole pizza in less than 3 minutes. Run to the store to buy another Guilt Reduction Pizza to bake to quickly resolve this guilt.

21. Scrounge around for some loose Zantac or Pepto Bismol.

And there you have it ladies!  Guilt Reduction Pizza.  It’s been a couple weeks and I’ve made several of them since. I haven’t had much reduction in guilt yet, but I am sure its just like taking an antidepressant where you have to take double the dose in the beginning for a month before you start to feel like it’s working!

Happy cooking!