Tag Archives: pizza

Pizza and chocolate

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You want to know what my problem is? (Yeah, I know. ha ha. How funny. She made it sound as though she only has one. Ha ha. That’s funny because I have a list this—————– long and she thinks she only has one…Shut up. You’re funny, you’re right, but you’re missing the point. Now hush and listen.)

My problem is twofold. First part–we have no chocolate in the house. Haven’t for a while. No cookies, no ice cream. Nothing with nougat or marshmallow or fudge. We have nothing fun in this house. Second part? Nobody delivers chocolate. Want pizza? Someone will bring it to your house. Want flowers? We can bring those right over. Want some Thai food, Chinese food, Indian food? No problem, we deliver. Fruit? Someone’s now delivering fruit, too, in little skewered topiaries. But there is no take-out industry based around my need for sugar-laced theobromine.

So here’s my idea. Thai place? Add chocolate to your menu. Pizza joint? You, too. Chinese restaurant? This stuff is pretty shelf stable and anyone willing to have it delived can’t be too picky. Offer it next to the lychee gel and the sweet wontons.

And now that I’m thinking about it, I’ve never seen a take-out Mexican place. What gives? I’ll tip well on a burrito that you bring straight to my place while I’m working at home. Or while my kid is coughing up regurgitated green snot. Or while my newborn (hypothetical newborn—don’t slam me with emails) goes through a growth spurt and sucks me dry, chained to the rocking chair with no break between nursing sessions, even to pee. I could totally use Mexican food delivered then.

But only if you’ll bring it with chocolate. Hell, I’ll buy a vacuum from a door-to-door salesman if you show up with chocolate when I call. Those m—f—ing Girl Scouts wrote down my deepest desires and then said they might deliver by the end of the month. What the f–k kind of customer service is that? Two month turnaround on chocolate? I could get my ass out the door and to the store if given two months.

Take-out chocolate. Desserts delivered on demand. Ice cream if you need it, when you need it. Please, someone steal this idea and make it reality. Please.  Because if you don’t, I have to do that, too. And I can’t even get off my ass to go get some chocolate, so how am I gonna get off my ass to deliver your chocolate, too?

Can’t we just live at The CheeseBoard?

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The center of my sense of home and community is The CheeseBoard Collective on Shattuck. Living near there formed some of the most important pieces of who I am, and visiting now brings back a flood of revelations, realizations, and nine-plus-senses pleasures that make me happy to my core.

So I took Peanut there.

He’s been before, but this time we went to the store/bakery and to the pizza joint. The latter is not at all the CheeseBoard where I lunched countless afternoons in the ’90s and ’00s. It’s bigger, since they took over the shop next door and expanded with more tables (shock), a bathroom (gasp), and a full area for the musicians.

The pizza of the day was roasted cauliflower, caramelized onion, mozzarella, cheddar, chive, and garlic olive oil on the trademark sourdough crust. It was gorgeous and drippy and wonderfully flavorful. But I’ve rarely had a bad slice there.

The band was the California Honeydrops. They sunk their teeth into a soulful performance and totally captivated my son.

So we ate, me a slice of heaven and him a cheese roll from the Collective. We listened to the blues. We watched the locals and newbies, alike. We basked in the glow of the new paint, the cheerful tile, and the clean bathrooms.

And he said to me, of my favorite place in the world, (except my aunt and uncle’s house at Thanksgiving), “this place make Peanut happy!”

I cried. “Me, too, bug. This place make mommy happy, too.”

I love you, CheeseBoard family.