4 ounces Black Olives, pitted and sliced
4 ounces Cherry Tomato, chopped with seeds removed
4 ounces fresh Mushrooms, thinly sliced
4 ounces Onion, finely chopped
Sauce: In a large saucepan, add together the Tomato Purée, Worcestershire Sauce, Barbeque Sauce, Barbeque Seasoning, Orégano, Garlic Salt, Basil, Bay Leaves and 1 teaspoon of Butter. Simmer over low-medium heat, stirring often, until ready to use (at least 30 minutes). If sauce begins to boil, reduce heat to low and continue to stir.
Pizza Dough: Combine 2½ cups of Flour with Yeast, Salt, Water, Syrup and 1 tablespoon of Butter. When those ingredients are thoroughly combined, fold in remaining flour until last of flour must be kneaded into dough. Dough should have a thick, smooth texture when done. Cover dough and let sit for 25 minutes. Lightly dust flour over work surface and place ¼ of the dough on it. Flatten dough with hands, dust dough with flour and then flatten the dough further with a rolling pin until large enough to fit a 12-inch, non-stick pizza pan. Place dough on pan and dimple with fingers. Repeat instructions with second half of dough for second pizza.
Topping the Pizza: Brush remaining Butter over top of pizza dough. Spread sauce liberally over dough, leaving about a ½-inch border around pizza. Spread cheese atop the sauce, followed by sliced and chopped toppings over the layer of cheese. If desired, add more cheese over toppings for a final topping for the pizza. Bake at 400° for 15 or 20 minutes, or until crust is a crispy, golden brown. Serve hot, garnished with grated Parmesan Cheese, Salt and Pepper to taste.
I used to buy Stouffer’s® Stuffed Bell Peppers so much that my grocery bill was almost as large as a week’s paycheck. I had to either cut down on eating one of my favorite foods or learn to cook it from scratch. Since I had ideas for adding more ingredients, the choice was simple. I usually only cooked these for myself, so I didn’t figure the recipe for a large amount. This recipe only needs to have the quantities multiplied by the number of people eating and you’ll have a nearly complete meal in this one by itself.
2 fresh Green or Red Bell Peppers
1 cup cooked Rice
I cup cooked Ground Beef
I cup Tomato Sauce
¼ cup Barbeque Sauce
2 fresh Mushrooms, diced
1 small Stewing Onion, diced
1 tablespoon Hickory Smoke Powder
2 teaspoons Garlic Salt
1 tablespoon Steak Seasoning
1 tablespoon Chili Powder
½ cup shredded Sharp Cheddar Cheese
¼ cup Green Olives w/Pimentos, diced
1 Bay Leaf
Cut the top off the Bell Peppers and scrape out the shell, discard top and seeds. Cook the rice as directed on the package. In a large skillet, cook the Ground Beef, pour off and discard the grease. To the skillet, add the Mushrooms, Onions, Olives, Barbeque Sauce, Tomato Sauce, Bay Leaf and the seasonings. Cook over medium heat, stirring often until bubbles appear, then reduce heat to low, cover and let simmer for 20 minutes. Place Bell Pepper shells into a casserole dish. Stir Rice into Ground Beef mixture, remove from heat and spoon mixture into shells. Pour remaining mixture and sauce around the shells. Cover and cook in oven preheated to 350° for 50 minutes. Then remove cover and spoon juices over Pepper shells and meat filling. Return to oven and cook an additional 5 minutes, uncovered. Serve two stuffed peppers per person with cheese sprinkled over top. Discard Bay Leaf. Salt and Pepper to taste.
10
Dressed for Success
Plumage, manes, and bright orange butts. The males of the “lower” species get all the cool garb. While every male would jump every female, given the chance, the females try to be selective and the males vie amongst themselves to see who will be top dog. Generally there are more males than females, and so survival of the fittest is always also survival of the prettiest. The king of the jungle always looks like the king and never like the jester.
However, once you “rise” to the human race, females outnumber the males. Suddenly, female looks matter, or at least the females think so. The truth is that when push comes to shove, every male would still jump every female, given the chance, but one-night stands and approaching from behind don’t do much for evolution. For real propagation and nurturing, particularly bearing in mind the long odds of human impregnation and the very long period of human gestation, the female’s got to look good enough to come home to even when morning sickness lasts well into the night.
So, in humans, the females get the feathers and the charge accounts. In the case of the second ex-Mrs. Lane, she believed that shoes were the attractor of moment. Imelda Marcos was a K-Mart shopper compared to my ex. When we split, she had to rent a mini-storage for the seasonal overflow, and Polaroid stock skyrocketed as she cleverly slapped photos of the shoes on the sides of the boxes so she could differentiate between two dozen pairs of bone pumps. I had no idea that bone came in so many colors.
At the same time, human males are hopelessly lost. Most mistakenly think that they have to look good—a vestige of our lesser ancestors combined with misleading instructions from females—and only an insightful few males realize that looks don’t mean shit. How many times have you said “How in the heck did that troll wind up with that supermodel?”, as if you were surprised. The answer is not money or power or brains or brawn; the answer is that any male can still have any female if he thinks of himself as king of the jungle. The difference being that a human male can look like the jester and still be king because there will never be enough kings to go around, while supermodels have become pretty much a dime a dozen thanks to cable television.
I am no king. Neither is Bill Suff.
When I was a teenager, I went with my friend Rob—the one who died in the wreck—up to an Oakland As game, where I was determined to make a play for the adorable blonde ballgirl. Rob and I had press passes, field passes, courtesy of me conning the A’s management, and so we were on the field in ballgirl territory as the players warmed up pregame. I assumed that our mere presence on the field would bespeak “importance” to the girl, but I knew I could cement our relationship once she noticed how nicely I was dressed. I was wearing a handsome, plaid, cashmere sport coat, bought for me by my mother, who had told me that you need to look good, stand up straight, and give girls nice presents—the basic marching orders for Jewish males.
When my conversation with the ballgirl went nowhere—”Hi, how are you?” “Fine. Could you move so I can watch batting practice?”—I resorted to pointing out my fine sport coat. Rob pretended not to know me. The girl looked right through me, sport coat and all. Maybe another of those blue-winged demons had winged in.
Nonetheless, pathetic though I was and rejected though I was, I didn’t pull out a knife and gut the cute little ballgirl. To this day I’ve never even had a negative thought about her. If she’d responded positively to my “advances”, I know I would have later concluded that she was pretty stupid.
Subsequent dating and marriage followed a more complex pattern, but underneath it all was the same insecurity and the same misplaced reliance on packaging. Essentially, I bought two wives, paid for by vast amounts of money and even vaster amounts of physical and emotional caretaking, all for naught. There is no more foolhardy or just plain wrong mission than deciding that your only goal in life is to make someone else happy. It is a manipulative and terribly selfish motive, dripping in honey, and I apologize.