Trips to John’s Marketplace always defy my imagination not just for the sheer amount of available beer, but also because I’m becoming increasingly aware that the massive selection is beginning to be less awe-inspiring and more ho-hum. That, my friends, is what happens when you find yourself swimming in available beer options. You go to a store that sells 1000 different beers and nothing catches your eye. You go to a pub with 20 taps and nothing appeals. Regardless of this growing problem, I still found myself walking out with eleven 22 oz. bottles of beer to take over to my Dad’s house for Father’s Day, so I’d say that in the end it worked out just fine. It might just be my imagination, and it truth, I hope it’s still just a deer-in-headlights feeling when faced with so many choices and not becoming jaded.
Aside from the case of beer, I also stopped by the grocery store and picked up ingredients for not one but two pizzas. The first was a Dad-friendly pizza with a tomato sauce base, mozarella, salume, italian sausage, mushrooms, green peppers, green olives, tomato and onion. I threw some feta, fontina and white cheddar on it, though, so I managed to class it up a bit. The other pizza was more Hanne-friendly, with olive oil and crushed garlic as the base, feta cheese, spinach, red onion, green olives and tomato. I had some red bell pepper, too, but I forgot to slice it up. Now, these two delicious pizzas would have been…well, delicious, but I was thwarted by a malfunctioning oven that refused perform its one job and get hot. We ended up having to put it on broil to heat it up enough, but it didn’t want to maintain the temperature so dinner preparation became a tightrope walk of turning broil on and off so as to not cook the toppings before the crust was finished baking.
FAIL.
So, everything tasted good but the crust never really finished cooking properly. I really dislike eating pizza with a knife and fork but occasionally technology fails in such a way that makes it necessary. Otherwise it was a nice day over at my Dad’s house, and I was able to fully enjoy the time thanks to my kind girlfriend who allowed herself to get roped into coming over with promise of a specific beer that was ultimately forgotten. My bad. I think that forgotten beer was what ultimately compelled her to elbow me in my nose so hard later that it still hurts now, 24 hours later, but she says it was an “accident” and that she didn’t mean to do it. Uh huh. I’m on to her.