Review: Mama Cozzi's Take & Bake Supreme Pizza

B. is in graduate school for physical therapy, which mostly means (to me) our entire relationship consists reading things in bed, reading things on the floor, reading things at coffee shops, and sleeping with the lights on. But occasionally a special PT thing will drive us out into the weird heterosexual purgatory that is Pittsburgh's downtown.

I was ending my workweek that day with my regular 12-hour shift, which meant I was already almost drunk. If you like being intoxicated but don't have that much money, I can't overstate how much 12 hours of unrelenting, punishing physical labor will do for you. Combine that with the constant stress of being an emotional outlet for complete strangers and I guarantee that by the third day you will be on your way to shitfaced. You don't have to be in nursing--you could be a new single parent of twins, or landscape while hanging out with the person your ex left you for.

This being a physical therapy program, you'd expect to find lots of high-energy, athletic, graceful young people, but you'd be dead wrong. Folks, I could barely see straight but managed to keep it together despite a tight pencil skirt, 4-inch heels, and 3 glasses of wine. I have never in my life seen more people drop full glasses of alcohol. TWO people ended up on the floor. Maybe this program is like psychology, in that people with psychological problems seem more likely to "want to help others"? (Based on my own reasons for getting a degree in psychology, obviously.) Like, these PT people, being some of the clumsiest, most injury-prone people on the planet, want the opportunity to heal others? I don't know.

Our Uber driver on the way home was actually a pretty interesting guy, telling us about Ye Olde Pittsburgh Bar Scene and how he once got his foot flushed in the bar spittoon and it was embarrassing unto death, etc. I can only imagine that he rolled his eyes at The Youth when I drunkenly interrupted him to announce to B. I was going to order a pizza.

When we got in she lit some candles and dimmed the lights. "Setting the mood for some pizza," I thought to myself, happily. I asked to borrow her laptop but she just turned on some music. "Okay, getting ready for a pizza party!" I said, a little more confused. Then she loosened her tie and started kissing me. Suddenly it dawned on me: she had forgotten about the pizza. She wanted to express her deep love for me, and I was trying to decide what toppings to get on the pizza, a pizza I was never going to eat.

I'm not very good at expressing my feelings or desires and I also like to imagine I can read minds (I mean, I do have a bachelor's in psychology, duh), and figured, "Wow, she doesn't want me to have the pizza. Is she trying to save me from myself? I should have worn an A-line skirt instead of a pencil skirt. Or maybe I'm too bossy? Maybe she doesn't feel like pizza? Should I break up with her now?" So in the end neither of us got what we wanted: I didn't tell her I still wanted the pizza, and we fell asleep with our clothes on.

The next morning, still feeling pain over The Pizza That Could Have Been, I asked B. why she didn't want the pizza the night before. "Oh my god, the pizza! I forgot you wanted it." Here I was just thinking she was punishing me! So she proposed we go to Aldi and get a ready-made pizza, which is how I know things are going to work out for us long-term.

World's Okay-est Make-Up Pizza

The great thing about this pizza is that it's not frozen, so it only takes about 20 minutes to bake it, which is important if you have a hangover from finishing drinks that people left on tables at a school event. The toppings are pretty solid and I even saw 1-2 mushrooms, in addition to pepperoni, sausage, onions, and stop-light peppers. That's right, y'all! This pizza probably beats out your local place with regards to Bell Pepper Diversity. B., being the non-nonsense New Englander she claims not to be, views crust as a purely practical means of holding pizza, and prefers not to waste calories actually eating it. And so she had a pretty approving comment: "It's good enough for people who like crust but not overwhelming for people who want to just get it over with."

Which I would argue applies to the entire pizza. Have you accidentally or on-purpose fallen asleep while your loving and adoring partner tries to convey their desire for you? Have you unwittingly or maybe vengefully withheld pizza from your partner and now feel a little bad? Say, "I'm kinda sorry but it was actually your fault for not speaking up" with this Supreme Take & Bake Pizza from Aldi.

Review: Deutsche Küche frozen Bienenstich

There are only two things I really care about: impressing people and death sugar. Baking involves both of those things and I derive a lot of--what's the approximation of joy for a person who obsessively competes with others? Whatever that is, that's the thing I get from it.

But I'm also really impatient, not exactly a character trait compatible with baking. I don't wait for the oven to pre-heat. I don't wait for cakes to cool before I frost them. I don't even really have the patience for meringue to whip up properly. But damn if I'll let that stop me from getting ambitious when it comes to people's birthdays.

In (yet another) attempt to impress someone I was dating, I came across a recipe for a cool-looking German dessert: Bienenstich, or bee sting cake. It's a more like a pastry, really--two bready layers with custard in between and a honeyed almond-encrusted exterior. I heard it was a little tricky, especially as you need to put a bunch of bees inside of it, but that just made me even more determined.

awwww heck yeah

I was working night shift at the time and frequently getting 2 or 3 hours of sleep on my days off (there was a lot of crying in the grocery store during this time) but it didn't matter: I needed to make this cake or I was going to be exposed for the mediocre poseur I was. 

When it came to the custard I thought I would just wing it because being awake for 38 hours straight will make you think things like that are a good idea. And...well:

WHO COULD EVER LOVE ME?!?

My then-boo thought it was tasty but I knew I was an embarrassment to my family. I banished the cake to the back of the fridge, shamefully consuming it only when I was alone. 

In a departure from what I think is most people's routine at Aldi--quickly shoving a bunch of cereal and almond milk into a bag they got free from the library and pretending they actually know the store layout, then going home and taking an Ativan--I decided to check out the frozen section and was excited to see a proper Bienenstich from the Deutsche Küche (that's German for Douche Cooker, don't ask me why) brand. It was my 25th birthday that weekend and what better way to celebrate than by reminding myself of my past failures?

Plus, it had this packaging:

Indulgent cakes? Oh hell yes. As opposed to some non-indulgent cakes I could name.

I celebrated a quarter of a century on Earth the way most people do--by lying in my bed, despairing, until about 9pm when I remembered--I had cake in the freezer! I hustled my butt into the kitchen and opened the box to find 4 perfect rectangles of German pastry. Sadly, while unwrapping them, the clingy plastic took off some of the almonds. 

Then I turned the box over and read "defrost for 3-4 hours." I'm an impatient person (see above) but that seemed unreasonable and cruel. I wasn't sad enough to eat frozen Aldi cake at 1 in the morning, depressing birthday notwithstanding. So I did what any person in my position would do and put the cake back for another day turned the oven on to 200. And waited barely long enough for the custard to defrost. Okay, to be TOTALLY honest I just let the edges defrost and then put it back in for another 10 minutes to let the middle defrost and continued eating it. Yes, I have a problem. Or problems.

not completely unfrozen, but not completely bad, either

I have to say, except for the custard consistency, maybe I didn't fail as badly as I thought I did with my own Bienenstich attempt. Maybe this dessert is just pretty average. I don't think the freezer birthplace had anything to do with it, really, except the almonds were a bit soggy. This was partly made up for by the fact that the bready edges got kind of toasted in the oven--so I'm not sure if the textures would be too similar if you have the patience of a saint/regular person and waited for this jawn (yo, Philly) to defrost sans oven. 

The most notable thing about this cake is the intense yeasty flavor--which is not particular to the Deutsche Küche version, but just a characteristic of this pastry. It's basically bread with a fluffy kind of vanilla cream, which is actually a bit gross if you can imagine it. 

So, I'm going to advise you lovely readers to go ahead and skip this one and maybe just get some fancy French toast for brunch instead. Unless you're 25 and your only passport to the world is through a box you found in the Aldi frozen section. Here's to another year!

Review: Little Salad Bar Chicken Salads

Chicken salad is a romantic food. Or at least, it's good for picnics. When I was in my last year of being a teen, I asked out this much older man for a bike ride and a picnic and then panicked. What the hell was I going to make that would impress him (but not require extravagant culinary skills or time away from like, smoking weed and watching boring-ass Criterion Collection films on my desktop computer)? I needed something that would transport well, be tasty, and pair easily with other picnic foods. And then I remembered this delicious chicken salad my mom made with red grapes, walnuts, and celery. (Sorry I used your recipe to seduce an inappropriately-aged dude, Ma.)

Fast forward to 6 years later and I am still using that chicken salad recipe to impress people I'm trying to get with ('sup, Jen!). When my girlfriend B. bought the cranberry-almond chicken salad a few months ago, I was pleasantly surprised and then mostly forgot about it. Until about week ago when I was at Aldi wondering if 239 out of 240 days is too many to eat some variation of a peanut butter sandwich for lunch (no) and found myself in front of the chicken salad. 

I rarely stray from my standard lunch of a peanut butter sandwich, carrots with hummus, yogurt, and a piece of fruit. My work involves a lot of physical labor and that's the amount of food I need to get me comfortably through a long shift; any change in that menu might cause me to be hungry at a weird time (and will definitely cause me to be hypervigilant in monitoring myself for hunger: "Oh my god, did my stomach just growl? God DAMN it, I knew I should have just brought a sandwich. Why did I think change was positive? Change is bad and scary. What am I going to do now, go to the vending machine and eat pretzels like some kind of animal with poor executive function?")

But I figured I could bring the chicken salad instead of an apple and eat that when it got to my end-of-shift break (not officially sanctioned by my workplace but a good idea if I don't want to lose my shit during my 12th straight hour of care-taking). 

Pictured: cranberry-almond chicken salad with precisely-measured lunch items

Plus, this chicken salad makes a good dinner with crackers if you haven't bothered to cook anything. It's got a little kick of sweetness, some nice big chunks of chicken, a creamy texture, and some crunch to it. The only real issue I had with it is that it has a little too much mayonnaise--you're going to want something fresh and green to go along with it. Still, it's good enough to bring on a picnic and lie and say you made it yourself and probably that person will think, "Wow, this person seems really competent and sexy and if she can make chicken salad like this without breaking a sweat, just imagine what other stuff she can do. I wonder what our kids will be named?" 

A few days later I found myself intrigued by the chipotle chicken salad. This was much less good. You'd think the creaminess combined with a little spicy chipotle flavor would pair nicely, but, confusingly, you'd be wrong. Something about this one just didn't taste right. Maybe the weirdness of the onion, or the black beans/corn kernels that were just numerous enough to be noticeable, but not frequent enough to impart any real flavor into the mixture, and giving it a distressingly creepy appearance.

That's how many corn kernels are in there for real

Plus, as B. pointed out, these chicken salads are full of preservatives. It was a little similar to that man I dated all those years ago--after a few days I started to worry that maybe this stuff was going to make me throw up. That's not to say it isn't delicious--it's just not for the long-term. 

Verdict: Pretty good, under the right circumstances. Go get some, find someone your own age (or not, I guess, I'm not your dad), and settle down to watch some 1960s French guy get his face eaten by dogs on your 2001 desktop PC.