How we make a pizza in twenty easy steps:

1)Raise a pig.

2) Send the pig to the butcher and get back tasty packages of meat including ground pork.

3) Shoot a deer.

4) Butcher the deer ourselves wrap meat in tasty packages including ground venison.

5) Mix the ground venison and pork with a bunch of seasonings and smoke it for awhile.  Call it pepperoni, store it in the freezer.

6) Make a crust – a yeast free, dairy free crust.

• Mix together: 2 cups of flour, 1 tsp salt, 2 tsp baking powder, 2/3 cup rice milk, 1/4 cup olive oil. Press out onto cookie sheet, coat with olive oil and pre-cook at 425.

7) Create another crust – a yeast free, mostly dairy free, wheat free crust that Clara can eat, hope that that whatever you come up with turns out better than the crumbly cardboard you made last time.

•  It did! Today’s Clara crust was my best effort so far, it went like this: mix 1 & 1/2 c barley flour, 1/2 c soy flour, 1 tsp salt 2 t special corn free baking powder, 1/3 c coconut milk, 1/3 c yogurt, 1/4 c olive oil. Press out onto cookie sheet, coat with olive oil and pre-cook at 425.

8) Get distracted by laundry and over flowing garbage and burn the edges of the crusts while setting off all the smoke detectors in the house.

9)Cut up Pepperoni that you made in step 5.

10) Realize you don’t have enough pepperoni and thaw out ground pork from step 2.

11) Mix ground pork with pizza spices from Penzeys and brown.

12) Grate a large pile of goat cheese for those who can’t have cow’s milk.

13) Grate a large pile of cow cheese for every one else.

14) Combine plain tomato sauce with more pizza spice from Penzeys.

15) Cut up pineapple.

16) Assemble pizzas to the direction of a five year old with the help of a two year old.

17) Put in oven to bake until toppings are browned.

28) Get impatient, turn on the broiler.

19) Quick take pizza out as it will be starting to burn because you forgot about it again.

20) Eat.

It’s a good twenty step process right? Fairly healthy result, made with partly local ingredients, minimal food additives, cooking kids… blah, blah, blah. After I look at my kitchen full of pineapple juice, sauce splatters, spilled flours and cheeses, dirty pans, bowls, spoons and baking sheets all I can think is that I really miss the days of the three step pizza.

1) Dial.

2) Open Door.

3) Eat.