Chimchimeny, chimchimineny, chim chim cheree...

I've never seen sweetcorn on pizza but there was a fashion a while ago for the most insane fusion-style "gourmet" pizzas imaginable, so we had to endure tandoori chicken pizzas, Thai beef pizzas, and so on. Now the big thing is for pizzas to be "authentic", so anything more than a drizzle of olive oil and a couple of anchovies will have the food police (con)descending in droves.

Some of the weird combos are good. Tandori chicken pizza is not bad, nor some of the feta combinations, nor the mexican pizzas. And the nice thing about the Pacific northwest is that they don't stop offering stuff just because it is out of style. So you can get Foccacio style pizza, and sicilian style and stuffed style, and weird combinations, and standard pizza all in the same place. Just a giant list of ingredients, and a choice of styles, and you put what you want on them. Tandoori chicken? Fajita beef? Artichokes, heart of palm? Sure you have those as a choice of ingredient. Classic peperoni , green peppers , olives ,sausage , mushrooms, anchoives? Any or all of the above too. Anything you can imagiine. Thin crust, sicilian (thick) crust, bread crust, stuffed crust - as you like. White pizza (no tomato sauce)? sure. Extra tomato sauce? sure. Which for me is the point of pizza. Pizza is the most customizable meal you can have out - leaving out buffets and places where you cook your own.

Gnnurgh. All this food talk, and I have a stomach bug. Skipping, skimming....

sweetcorn is an unusual thing to put on pizza? Really? Huh. Chicken and sweetcorn on pizza is very nice.

When I was at University, the local pizza restaurant was a (now bought out by Pizzaland, or someone) chain called The Pizza Gallery, which had all-you-can-eat nights on a Wednesday and all the pizzas were named after artists. The Canaletto was a chicken and sweetcorn pizza, and it was far nicer than paintings by the painter of the same name. (Landscapes -pah. Seascapes? Double pah.) The Leonardo was a pizza with spaghetti bolognese (complete with spaghetti) on it, and it was actually, despite sounding daunting, yummy. Mmmm. I mean, they had your standard pepperoni pizza, or ham'n'pineapple, or what have you. But they also had spaghetti bolognese pizza.

Damn, and now I'm all nostalgic. We used to go every Wednesday, and my room-mate always had a Michelangelo (prawns, tuna, anchovies), garlic bread with cheese and a regular diet coke. The following summer, when she was working on a campsite in France, a bunch of us went in there and we ordered a Michelangelo in her honour, and wound up taking a slice out of the restaurant, wrapping it up in plastic and posting it to her. Heh. Nothing says love like stinky fish pizza by post.

(She laughed like a drain, incidentally, rather than renouncing our collective stinky-ass friendship)

Is now the time to tell the "Penis Van Lesbian" joke? (Upshot: he changed his name and is now successfully Dick Van Dyke.)

That kind of makes Van Dyke a beard for Mary Tyler Moore, doesn't it?

Dick Van Dyke was also in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

There is a restaurant in Cincinnati (Zip's Cafe) where you can order a hamburger with a bratwurst (cut in half and flattened) on top. I think it is called a Pope John.

Cincinnati is a town that likes its pork.

I have much love for Dick Van Dyke.

I have much love for pizza with just about anything veggie based included.

I also believe I would enjoy any combination of fried egg, beet and fake burger.

Pretty much lovin everything this Monday morning, including Buffistas, as always.

OOooh. OK, hamburger with bratwurst sounds yummy. But then, many things sound yummy with bratwurst, in my mind.

Heh. My AcDec team was seriously bitter becuase my sophomore year (before I was on it) they got to go to Nationals, but then junior and senior year, we won at state for "big schools", but the small school winner somehow beat us overall, and got to go to nationals. Hmph. It was lots of fun though--I loved how well-rounded you had to be. I've never been a superstar in any one particular field, but well-roundedness I have in spades, academically!

To tie the Dick Van Dyke talk to the thread title, I've noticed a remarkable phenomenon - Mention DVD to almost anyone from the UK. They will roll their eyes and exclaim, "Oh that awful Cockney accent!" It's always the first thing they say.

Although, the fact that none of you have mentioned it yet makes the phenomenon less, uhhh, phenomenal.