The Pizza Pod, or, How Girlfriend Performed a Birthday Miracle

Girlfriend asked me what I wanted for dinner on my birthday and, as I'd been craving pizza for roughly a million billion years or since last week or whatever, I said pizza. She said that she could make this happen. And she did... oh sweet Baby Jesus, did she ever. By sheer force of will, and in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds, and using a culinary ingenuity rarely found outside of a Top Chef episode, she fed me some motherfucking pizza. In pod form.

Here's what happened:

It was decided that Girlfriend would MAKE the pizza, because A) she's a good cook and because B) ordering a pizza from one of our local places costs as much as renting a magical car that drives on water and taking it to Italy to get a fresh pie made by Luigi Q. Pizzamaker, the inventor of pizza, pizza rolls, pizza bagels, and, oddly enough, the electric toothbrush. Roughly, of course... I mean, YES renting the magic car is technically more expensive, especially when you consider that it runs on children's wishes mixed with a starbeam plucked from the sky, but I think you get my point... pizza is 'spensive. So she went out, bought all the ingredients, brought them home, and assembled that pizza like she was putting together a crack team of assassins to take down the President of Bolivia. Dough stretched out taught and tan like beach-bunny skin, the sauce spread on all slutty like a dare, the onions diced, the olives chopped, the pepperoni studding the landscape like a minefield of deliciousness, shredded mozzarella raining down like Manna from Heaven. She had the concept of pizza locked down tighter than a fucking mob boss bank vault. Leonardo DaVinci came in, took one look at this pizza-to-be, and started ripping up all his notes and paintings while grumbling "I guess-a the DaVinci is-a pointless a-now."

All that was left was to cook the motherfucker to a golden, cheese-bubbling brown.

It was at this point that we realized that our oven wasn't working. Because, of course. Why WOULD it be working on my birthday? My first thought was that I'd forgotten to pay the gas bill (it's happened before), but... nope... the stove top was running to factory specs. It was just the oven, the cradle of pizza life, that was out of commission. Sorrow took my dreams of eating a delicious, homemade pizza pie and beat the shit out of them like a Jackie Chan flick... one of the good ones, like before he thought he was Buster Keaton and started hanging out with Chris Tucker.

I was all like, "No, it's fine... don't worry about it... whatever..." and Girlfriend was like, "No, it is NOT fine... it's your birthday and YOU... SHALL... HAVE... PIZZA!!!" It was a very Gandolf-fights-the-Balrog moment, but, you know, more Italian food-y.

So she takes this unmade pizza and folds it into a ball. Like a pizza dumpling, or if Taco Bell's Crunchwraps were the size of Soccer balls and not full of hot Mexican vomit. And then... madness and crazy genius collided in a thermonuclear war of ideas shot through with a brilliant, beautiful light. She took the wad of pizza stuff... the Pizza Pod, if you will... placed it in a skillet on our, if you'll remember, still working stove top. She plopped a lid on the skillet and turned on the burner.

"That'll never work," I said.

"Oh ye of little faith," she said.

After a few minutes, using the skillet lid and a an extra plate and some acrobatic moves usually only seen on the Cirque Du Soleil stage, she flipped the Pizza Pod over so it could cook on it's other side.

And then it was done. Golden brown and all crispy like baked love? Yes! Hot, molten pizza goo in the middle like the tasty lava of your volcano dreams? Yes! The most amazing thing anyone's ever done for me in a kitchen??? UM... FUCKING YES!!!

Dudes... she cooked a pizza in a skillet on the stove top! What kind of beautiful-brained super-smarty did I hook myself up with? Here's a picture of me all beard-y and pleased, holding the Pizza Pod like a proud papa showing off his brand new baby while brandishing a knife for some reason...

It might not be the prettiest thing to look at, but neither was the Cotton Gin when it first sprang forth from the deep waters of invention. Besides... the Pizza Pod is all about the taste, the love, the lengths that a girl will go to make damn sure a birthday isn't a downer. And all of that, as I can personally attest, was just fucking excellent.

Birthday miracles, kids. Can't beat 'em.