MYO Pizza Is Better Than Soup from a Can

I might be a little closer to the edge than I’m comfortable with. A few days ago I launched into a full-blown tirade about SOUP while driving Little Big Boss (LBB) (13) home from school.

LBB has Annie Jr. rehearsals with a community theater one weekday evening from 6:30 to 8:30 but also has drama club after school the same day, requiring a 4:10 pick-up and putting us home around 4:45. This leaves a navigable but not crazily generous window for dinner preparation, consumption, and clean-up, so I have to have at least something resembling a plan. I shared my envisioned menu with her on the ride home: make-your-own pizza (“MYO pizza,” among the cool kids dorky moms). Long a surefire hit among almost all household residents! Big Daddy (BD) is the “exception” that truly proves the rule. He claims to not like MYO pizza but then always tries to mooch a little from everyone once those perfect pies come out of the oven, piping hot and gooey and smelling so, so good.

With BD off working a swing and LBB’s evening extracurricular on the near horizon, I thought MYO pizza the perfect dinner choice. But LBB’s raised-eyebrow sigh when I presented the idea screamed otherwise.

“What? You don’t want MYO pizza?“

More sighing. “Not really.”

“It’s MYO! Except giant! Because I couldn’t find the individually-sized ones we usually use. So more like MYO 1/4 pizza. Ha ha ha!”

“Oh, fun.”

Not “Oh, fun!” with an exclamation point. “Oh, fun.” With a period. As in full stop. Flat line. The same kind of fun as being the parent of an almost 14-year-old doing everything in her power to quash your enthusiasm. It’s MYO pizza! What did MYO pizza ever do to deserve such disdain? Could it be that this dish is not actually as much fun as I think it is?!? That hardly seemed likely. Perplexed, I took a moment to regroup. At the next stoplight I asked what she had in mind for dinner.

“I don’t know. Just not pizza.”

I am not a fan of Team Your-Plan-Is-Garbage-But-My-Plan-Is-Nonexistent. Still I tried to remain calm thought about what else was available, mentally scanning the contents of the fridge and the pantry.

“Soup? You want soup? There’s always soup.”

LBB lit up at that suggestion. You would have thought I said I was going to make breakfast for dinner.

“Yes! Soup sounds perfect!”

“You really love soup.”

“I really do. I was just looking at this meme that said, ‘The only thing I can think about when the weather starts getting a little colder: soup, soup, soup, soup, soup.’ That’s me!”

Then it was my turn to have a big sigh.

“If you have soup, then I have to have soup.”

“No, you don’t! Why are you saying that?”

“Because all the soup MUST be consumed in one sitting. Whenever there is leftover soup, I move it from the pot to a storage container and put it in the fridge. But it just moves around in there for the next week to 10 days. It stays near the front of the fridge for the first few days, with everybody taking turns picking it up, inspecting it, and turning their noses up at it once they realize it’s leftover soup. And then at some point it makes its way to the depths of the fridge and then just ages off in lonely isolation. Then I chuck it when I do a fridge clean out. That’s why I have to have soup if you have soup. We have to finish it all in one go because if we don’t I’m just going to end up resentfully throwing away the leftover soup 10 days from now! The whole process is a waste of time and energy! And we’re also wasting food and wasting water to wash the container and then I have to feel bad about that, too. No one ever wants the leftover soup. Ever!”

LBB eyed me with concern and waited a bit once my rant ended—presumably to make sure it was really over.

“I don’t have to have soup.”

“Oh, you are having soup.”

“Are you having soup?”

“Of course I am having soup! I have just lost my mind over the anguish leftover soup causes in my life, so now I have to have soup whether I want soup or not!”

“Well, OK then.”

“But I am still making MYO pizza because there’s no way That Dude is going to want soup. And because I want pizza! I am having soup AND pizza.”

That Dude (TD) (12) still loved MYO pizza, to my knowledge at least. Then again, I thought LBB still loved MYO pizza until this very car ride. TD didn’t have a particularly stellar track record with actually executing the “MYO” portion of MYO pizza, to be sure, but that didn’t really matter this time since it was giant MYO pizza anyway.

The remainder of the ride home was pretty quiet, with LBB probably wary of triggering another impassioned diatribe about soup and me exhausted from the first one.

By the time we had gotten ourselves in the door and I had gathered the soup and pizza makings, I was feeling calmer. I opened a can of chicken noodle, dumped the contents in a small pot, and set it to simmer on back burner, out of my way. I focused instead on the Zen vibe of painting a thin layer of olive oil on the pizza crust with a pastry brush. The hypnotic calm of using the back of a spoon to make concentric circles of pizza sauce out to the edge. The satisfying process of grating mozzarella cheese into a heaping mound on the cutting board. No finnicky soup-loving teenager was going to rob me of my MYO pizza joy.

LBB worked on homework at the kitchen counter as I prepared dinner, so my tantrum obviously hadn’t scared her off completely. Halfway through the pizza’s 15 minute bake time–just exactly on cue–the cheesy, tomatoey, doughy goodness that is pizza started to emit its irresistable aroma. I watched LBB from the corner of my eye as I prepped a salad to go with the meal and saw her inhale deeply more than once as the pizza smell gained control of the airwaves. I eyed her directly and threw down the gauntlet. 

“Smells good, doesn’t it?”

“Mmmmmm, really good.”

“Was that a 5-M or 6-M ‘mmmmmm’?”

“Six! Do you think there might be enough for me to have a slice of pizza and my soup?”

“Yes, Ms. Just-Not-Pizza, I think there will be enough for you to have pizza AND soup, like me.”

“Are you mad at me?”

“Nope! I am vindicated! You have confirmed the irresistable nature of MYO pizza! It is super fun; it smells heavenly; and you cannot deny its power even when your precious soup, soup, soup, soup, soup is simmering away right above it.”

“I feel like you’re really close to bursting into diabolical laughter. What can I do to talk you down?”

“Just make sure we eat all the soup.”