Pot-Pourri Pizza

My Dad owned a pizza place before I was born. I mean right before. I think me being on the way was a big part of what made him snap out of it and get a job he hated and stick with it for 25 years.

The pity is, he makes really good pizza. But in 1968, Americans didn't eat pizza three times day, and a town of 1200 was not big enough to support much of any restaurant since those same Americans didn't eat out nearly so much.




There were other issues, of course. Mowing lawns with my Dad, I learned about his general business acumen. One job would be lost because he priced it too high, then the next job would be a ball-buster and he'd underbid it for fear of not getting the job. Then we'd be finishing after dark, making a third what we should have.



Still, if Dad had understood he was going to commute to and eventually move to Overland Park no matter what, and opened Pot-Pourri Pizza there instead of in Baldwin, Kansas, I'd be heir to a pizza fortune.



Anyway, we try to badger Dad into making pizza at least once a year. I often request it as my birthday dinner.



Dad's pizza is different from the typical Lobster Land pie: I make big, thick, pillowing crusts and Dad makes what I refer to as 'cracker' crusts. He insists they are not cracker crusts, because apparently there is such a thing as a thinner crust, but I'm not so sure.



Anyways, I made a couple of pies, both sans red sauce (a bit of olive oil instead). I made four or five different types of pizza on each crust. Usually, at home, I make a whole pie for each combination and end up making too much pizza without making all the recipes I envisioned.

This time I made all my pizzas in zones. One corner might be smoked oysters, anchovies and shrimp, another might be Italian sausage, bacon, onion and black olive, another slice might be pepperoni and green pepper, etc.



Mo kept trying to steal this little guys that live at my Dad's house. She smuggled a couple of armloads out to the car, which I snuck back in before we left. She tried the same stunt when we went to another friend's house for a dinner/Border War party, trying to steal their honyock's toys. We have toys like this at my house, but not as many as we would if Mo hadn't flushed so many down the toilet, stuck them down air returns, thrown them into the neighbor's yard, stuck them in the hole in the bathroom wall...



There were nine children in the house, most of them under five owing to my step-siblings propensity for rapid breeding. Any idea how loud it gets in a house with nine kids and only eight adults?