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Monthly Archives: October 2015

I make! Breakfast pizza edition

Pizza rat.  I’ve been told that this is actually me in rat form.

I continue to make pizza.  Because…why not?  You already know of my excessive fondness for pizza.  And now, I have expanded the pizza making to the early morning hours!  Huzzah!  While I think cold or reheated (via skillet) pizza is a wonderful breakfast, I’ve decided that I should also have the option of having fresh pizza at breakfast.  And so, breakfast pizza!

Thus, I recently made a breakfast pizza consisting of a garlicky olive oil, fresh asparagus tossed in that same garlicky olive oil and some grated parm, grape tomatoes, fresh mozz, and fresh eggs cracked on top.  Why?  Because I had all of that in my fridge already as well as pizza dough and I needed to get rid of some of it.  Also, pizza.  Duh.

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The pizza dough was a no-knead dough recipe as the last pizza post and it was unfortunately still a tad salty for my taste.  The salt didn’t magically disappear.  You know, as salt does sometimes (it does not).

But since I knew that crust would be somewhat salty, I purposely did not season any of the toppings with other than some fresh ground pepper.  I baked it on a quarter sheet pan, because I assembled it the night before, at 450degF.  The results were good…but soggy.  There were a lot of toppings and I wasn’t baking directly on the stone so the crust didn’t really have a chance to really get nice and crisp.  It tasted really good, still a bit on the salty side, but really good with the garlic and the asparagus and the runny egg.  But the texture…

I did think I could do better, so here’s attempt #2.  Attempt #2 was probably 4 days after originally making the dough.  The crust was definitely the most flavorful of the bunch.

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I used the same toppings but this time I brushed the dough with some olive oil and garlic and then parbaked the crust at 550degF for about 8 min.  I did forget to dock the dough and it puffed up a bit.  I had to try and work around that to make sure the eggs didn’t slide off.  Remember to dock the dough, guys.

Anyway, after removing the crust from the oven, I loaded up the toppings, arranged the eggs so they didn’t immediately slide off, and put it back in the oven for another 10 min to get the crust nice and browned.  The problem with leaving it in the oven for 10min was that the eggs were overdone.  They were gel set as opposed to runny.  Still delicious, but I think 8 min would be about the max you could leave the eggs in the oven and still have them be kind of runny.  So I had good crust but sub-par eggs this time.  There will need to be attempt #3.

On spiders and coworkers

I think I found a new superpower.  I see spiders on coworkers.  Not like fake spiders.  I’m not hallucinating spiders on people.  I just seem to have a knack for seeing a spider crawling over my coworkers.  And by knack, I mean that I’ve seen it happen twice.  (Also, there are no pictures of spiders in this post.)

The second time happened just recently.  I was at lunch with my PM, whom I will call 💄 (yes there is a reason behind my choice in emoji, no I won’t explain what it is), inside a relatively nice restaurant.  He was talking to me about a project when I looked up and saw a small jumping spider crawling across his chest.  True to form, I didn’t say anything right away.  It was a jumping spider after all.  I thought maybe it would jump off.  But no, it continued on its merry way all the way up to his collar.  At that point, I decided that it would be a good idea to say something.  I figured my PM would probably start if he felt the spider crawl onto his neck and then maybe he’d fling the spider into someone’s food and cause a big commotion.  I try and avoid big commotions.

The thing was, he was talking and kept talking.  I don’t really like to interrupt people.  Also, it’s hard for me to interrupt people.  They generally don’t hear me.  But I figured I really needed to make an effort to let him know that there was a spider on his collar.

When I finally got his attention, as he didn’t really need to pay attention to me to tell me about the project, it took longer than I expected to convey the information that there was a spider on his collar.  First of all, it took a while for him to understand that there was a spider on his shirt.  Then it took longer for him to understand that it was on his collar.

Me: [💄], there’s a spider on your shirt.

💄: What?  Anyway, I think we will need the software—

Me: Really, there’s a spider on your shirt.  It’s on your collar.

💄: Huh?  About the software, have you used it before?

Me: Spider.  On your shirt.  Collar.  [points to collar]

💄: Oh, there’s a spider on me?  [brushes at shoulder]

Me: No, on your collar.  [points to collar]

💄: Huh?  [brushes at chest]

Me: Collar!  [points to collar]

💄: [brushes at sleeve]

Me: The spider is on your collar!

💄: Oh, my collar?  [looks at collar, sees spider, calmly brushes spider off]  It’s a jumping spider.

Me: Yes, it is a jumping spider. [secretly impressed 💄 knows it’s a jumping spider; immediately makes mental comparisons to previous spider-on-coworker incident]

Overall, I was quite amused by the incident. 💄’s demeanor was quite different from Mr. Arachnid’s.  There was no stiffening in surprise. 💄 was calm and relaxed and nonchalant about the whole ordeal.  But he also completely was not listening to me otherwise the incident would have been over much quicker.  Perhaps it was also slightly infuriating since he was listening but totally not listening to me at the same time.  At least Mr. Arachnid listened and then later told me that I should tell him such things sooner so that “we can plan a course of action.”  I am still very entertained by that line.

As it was, 💄 brushed the spider off into the aisle and there possibly was a waiter walking by at the time.  I don’t really remember.  The spider might have made it onto someone’s food despite all my effort.  Sugh.