Delicious Brick Oven Pizza

Yesterday, after church, we were saying goodbye to one of our token old people, asking about his latest stent implantation and his knees, sharing about the pizza buffet we’d visited the day before, to which he scrunched up his nose. He nearly shivered with disgust, the way I do when I hear that Kevin Smith will be a guest on tonight’s late-night talk shows.

You see, our septuagenarian hates dairy. He’s not even lactose-intolerant. He just doesn’t like cheese. Even though there are a bajillion cheeses in this world–creamy, melty, full-fat cheeses, he doesn’t cotton to them. And that pretty much rules out a ton of mealtime options. Including pizza. I don’t get it. I’ll eat pretty much any flavor of pizza, thin ‘n’ crispy or deep dish, and I’ll eat it cold for breakfast the next morning. Throw an egg on it, I don’t care.

So even though he’s not right in the head, bless his heart, we love him anyway–misguided opinions and all. I understand why he’s so grumpy all the time now. Life without cheese is no life at all.

Oh, and P.S.–that first image isn’t a brick oven at all. It’s a glass factory about 100 years ago, with some child labor thrown in for fun. I’m sure that standing all day on bricks and breathing in that stagnant air made for a long work shift. I bet those boys wouldn’t be prat enough to turn down some cheese.