This week has been brutally cold and windy. Which makes me sad, very sad. Winter has been great — it brought the biggest cheese ever — yet I’m ready for it to be over. I reach this point every January, after the holidays have gone, and there is no lingering celebrations with family or friends trying to drag out the merriment for as long as possible, and the point has been reached today. I’m done. There is nothing left to look forward to in the remaining winter weeks, except my four year anniversary — and really the husband and I have discussed picking a totally random day, like May 19th or October 8th or another day where it is not hard to come by a dinner reservation, or enjoy one anothers company in the middle of a crowd as we just had to pick, ahem, I had to pick the day of hearts and roses to get hitched.

Spring is now in the forefront of my mind, a time that will bring actually ripe fruits and vegetables instead of the hot house and imported varieties from other countries. But with spring comes color, flower buds that eventually turn vibrant yellow, or tiny green sprouts of grass that shoot up into a thick carpet. And the sun, it melts the gray filled days of a dead and unappealing winter away.

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So I may or may not have taken the above picture and I may or may not have taken the picture while being in the picture, because if I do confess to anything, and I am not confessing, I would just be showing my amazing talent of teleportation/my Flash like speed between clicking the “take picture button” to grabbing pot holders, holding up a hot pizza and positioning myself correctly on the other side of the lens before the shutter snaps the shot — I mean, if I confessed such awesome skills I would feel like I could then get away with the fact that I may have been wearing some super comfortable cropped pajama pants in the middle of the day, but, I can’t confess, because what super human would wear lame polka dot pants when I could be wearing hot pink spandex with a super cool black mask all while looking sexy instead of frumpy, I mean I would just be asking for someone to poke fun at me rather than awe at my mad skills.

But just because I can’t make such a confession doesn’t mean I can’t confess a little something else about this girl on the other side of the screen. But I warn you, it is nothing as cool as polka dot pants, it concerns pizza. Every three months I seem to come down with a mad case of pizza lust. There is something about boozy crust with piles of cheese and toppings baked in a hot oven until crispy and the edges get slightly charred that I become madly obsessed with — more so than cropped pajama pants. It started with an unassuming visit to a pizza joint, to which I wore normal human clothes, that inspired a pizza so wonderful it jump started what seems like a routine of pizza mongering that must be filled every few months and so that is where we are today, filling my mad desire for pizza that is not excessively greasy or requires tips to a delivery guy when you could make it from scratch before it gets to your front door.

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I always seem to land on the recipes that require some sort of booze, it’s like I have a radar for it, yet I never realize it requires alcohol until after I’ve bookmarked it and have come back almost 2 years later and realize, whoa, this is a beer pizza. Then you have to make it, and you kick yourself for letting it take two whole years to get back to, I mean who does that?

Plus it gives you a reason to try new cool leafy green things, like rabe. After just trying swiss chard for the first time (yes, as in ever) I was amazed at how much I actually liked it, I mean me and green things, we don’t get along unless the word bean comes after it. Needless to say I was very excited — and it’s rabe season here, meaning it’s going to be real good.

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Just when you thought you had a whole weekend of nursing your turkey hangover I come and give you a reason to not settle with your cold turkey sandwiches or your mashed potato pancakes — seriously Meg, what are you trying to do here? Well, first I should applaud you if you were planning on gobbling up all those leftovers that seems to stick around in the fridge for weeks, because if there is one known fact about Thanksgiving it’s that there is always too much food — two types of stuffing, three kinds of bread, a smorgasbord of meats — cold-cuts, ham and of course the big bird — and the mashed, gratined, casseroled, scalloped varieties of potatoes — which leaves you with approximately 28.3 days to finish those turkey legs before the next big party — Christmas. Geesh!

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I have no idea if I am an artichoke lover or hater. I’ve actually tried to avoid finding out if the heart of this vegetable is something I really want to fall in love with. My first encounter was with a spinach artichoke dip. Good? Definitely, especially when it is a spinach artichoke fondu, but can I really base my like or dislike of something when it is drowning in a vat of cheese? I think not. It was not until a recent trip with some girlfriends at a pizza joint that it occurred to me to give artichokes a chance. Each of us being famished beyond reason, ordered an individual pizza telling each other we would “share” – I being the only one mumbling those words under my breath hoping no one would want an absurd pizza with four different kinds of mushrooms and three varieties of cheese, a girls gotta have her priorities and limits when it comes to sharing, right?

Well after putting in our order, we saw tucked behind the napkins and salt and pepper shakers a little side menu that talked of a spinach artichoke pizza. We all quickly discussed the possibilities of changing our order to include such a pizza, but it was a fleeting thought as they brought out all six pizzas not but five minutes later. Ever since, I have had a craving for this pizza. I don’t even know what it is suppose to taste like, but I imagine a cheesy dip filled with artichoke hearts and garlicky spinach spread onto flat bread and baked until the edges are crispy and golden. This was a pizza to be desired.

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