Pizza Fanatic

In Julie Powell’s book Julie and Julia, there are a couple of references to Domino’s bacon-jalapeño pizza. This must have been a special, because it’s no longer on the [Domino’s](http://www.dominos.com/) web site, although I did find the Bacon Cheeseburger Feast pizza and the Steak Fanatic Pizza:

> The Steak Fanatic Pizza combines guys’ ultimate food cravings — steak and pizza — into one delicious arrangement. The new Steak Fanatic Pizza is crafted with Domino’s signature hand-stretched dough piled with Angus steak — on top of more steak — and smothered in American and provolone cheeses.

This pie is also described as “man-fuel,” and you can add extra steak for $2. In conjunction with the Steak Fanatic pizza, Domino’s also introduced the Domino’s Pizza Steak Fanatic Pizza Couch. I’m still not joking. The couch is not made out of steak, which is total bullshit.

Anyway, Iris loves pizza, bacon, and chiles of all kinds, and I sure liked the idea of bacon-jalapeño pizza, so I decided to make some. Everything you need to make this pie is at Trader Joe’s. Get their new cornmeal pizza dough, a jar of pickled jalapeños, a package of low-moisture whole-milk mozzarella, some Niman Ranch bacon, and the tomato sauce of your choice. This isn’t exactly what I did, because I already had some bacon and spaghetti sauce in the fridge, and I forgot the mozzarella.

Preheat the oven to 500°F with a pizza stone or tiles on the bottom rack. Slice three rashers of bacon crosswise into half-inch pieces. Cook it in a pan until just starting to crisp, then transfer to a paper towel-lined plate.

The cornmeal dough tears easily, so you can’t fling it in the air, but it’s a snap to roll out with a rolling pin. Roll it out thin on a sheet of parchment and then cut off the excess. Top the pizza with sauce, shredded mozzarella, and a liberal dose of bacon and jalapeños (I didn’t use enough of either). Bake for seven minutes or until the cheese is browning and bubbly. Iris loved it, though not as much as Laurie did.

I considered taking this in a more Southwestern direction by putting chili powder in the sauce or something, but decided that would be veering into Domino’s Taco Fiend Pizza territory. Probably a crumble of Mexican hard cheese over the top wouldn’t hurt, though. I did try fresh jalapeños against pickled, and pickled won hands-down.

Now, I’m going to collapse on my Steak Lover’s Couch and take a nap.

Nongurt

Iris has been eating yogurt almost as long as she’s been eating solids. We started out buying Brown Cow plain yogurt and mixing it with Gerber fruit purees, which are really good, especially the pear. In fact, a 50-50 mix of whole milk plain yogurt and strained pears with a shake of cinnamon would be a good breakfast for anyone.

“Yogurt” was also one of Iris’s first words, but it came out sounding something like “yoingyoing.” Sometimes she would say, “Dada. Yoingyoing. Dada. Yoingyoing,” nonstop until I began spooning yogurt into her mouth. Now she says it more like “nongurt.”

I’ve gotten too lazy to mix up fruit yogurt first thing in the morning. Sometimes we buy Brown Cow flavored yogurts, but these have many drawbacks. They’re expensive and too sweet, and they’re fruit-at-the-bottom, which I’ve always found kind of gross and hard to mix. Finally, Iris and I prefer a less runny yogurt. Sometimes we get Tillamook, especially Key Lime Pie flavor (which is more spoonable because it’s made with gelatin), but it’s hard to pretend that this is nutritious.

Then Laurie introduced us to Greek yogurt.

Greek yogurt has no gelatin, but your spoon will stand up in it because it’s strained. This also means that it has more fat than whole-milk yogurt. People under two need a high-fat diet for healthy brain development. People over thirty have less of an excuse, but Greek yogurt is awesome. At Trader Joe’s they sell Total brand, which is the smoothest and has a little pot of honey integrated in the cup. They also sell their own brand, which comes in a bunch of blended flavors, including strawberry, strawberry-banana, honey, and fig.

The fig yogurt is awesome. It’s probably what that “figgy pudding” song is talking about. It’s full of chunks of dried fig and crunchy fig seeds, which Iris calls “bumps.”

Iris is of the age where she can pick up phrases out in the world (most often at Grandma’s house). The other day I sat her down at the breakfast table and gave us each a bowl of fig yogurt. I took a bite and said, “Mmm…fig yogurt.”

Iris said, in a tone of mock astonishment, “Wait a minute! That’s not fig yogurt!”

She was wrong, so I don’t know if this makes her really smart or just the opposite.