Just eating ma sammich.
Last Friday, I was eating a sandwich from a place called Home Grown that was really good, and it came with some chips that were also really good. One of my co-workers wondered aloud if they actually grew the potatoes themselves to make the chips. That lead me to then say, “Nope. I think they grew the chips in the garden in their back lot.” Then I was reminded that the reason I hate gardening, despite the fact that my last name is Gardner, is because the food that is grown in a garden is so boring.
Why I don’t garden.
What kinds of foods would bring me out of my 42 year retirement from gardening? Tomatoes and potatoes and corn and wheat are not an enticing thing for me. How about something that I would actually eat? How about something that is bad for you? Why is dirt so restrictive? Why can’t things grow in the dirt besides fruits and vegetables? Where is the multi-ingredient foods, the stuff that doesn’t need to be combined with other things? And what about desert? If Moses got manna from heaven, why can’t I grow Ice cream in the fields?
I’m into fitness.
Let’s get down to the real question. Why can’t I grow a Pizza Gardens? Or better yet, become a pizza farmer. Because if there were, I would quit my job right away and tomorrow there would be a pizza garden growing in my back yard.
I would wake up early every morning(around 11 am), waddle out to garden, pound my chest from last night’s heartburn, and pull a pizza tenderly from its stalk and taste if it was ripe enough for harvesting.
Then my garden would expand. I would start investing in some center pivot irrigation, which would properly Pepsi and Coke the pizza fields just right.
Then I would start sprinkling just the right amount of yeast with the pizza seeds and my pizza stalks dough would start rising better than the neighboring pizza farms.
I would then start making sure the sun was rotating through the fields at just the right rate and at the perfect 350 degree temperature, so that the pizza was not too doughy or not too burnt.
What do you know? Their little footballs.
Then I would start expanding to new fields. The west fields would be extra cheese fields that would make sure it wasn’t just a little bit more cheese, but double the amount or the regular cheese. And I would make sure that even though there was twice the amount of cheese the rest of the ingredients would still show through.
I would make sure the stuffed crust fields were not only getting the right amount of cheese in the edge of the crust, but that the rest of the crust wasn’t thin. And if a crust ever did get too thin, I would just have to grind that crop into the ground and start over again. Because pizza should never have too thin of a crust.
I would come home in my overalls sweaty, smelling like cheese and tomato sauce and pepperoni. I would go to the feed store for more yeast and cheese and complain with the other Pizza farmers about the surplus this year and how we are getting too many buy one get one free’s at the local Pizza hut, or how Little Caesar’s is going with that new farm for supply because they are adding bacon around the crust.
My kids would get sick of eating pizza every night. “Can’t we have some corn or wheat or rice tonight?” And I would say, “No, now eat your pizza and Pepsi and then go take your heartburn medicine. And no snacking on that kale or salad. You’ll be strong and healthy if you keep eating those vegetables and fruits!”
And I would get old and realize that my bitter Pizza farm was for nothing but cheap local pizza franchises and I would have been better off selling the place long ago. And my son never really liked pizza farming with me and never intended to take over the family pizza farm anyways, but never told me, because I was too gruff and bitter. I discover that he wanted to do something more with his life like become an office drone, a customer service rep, or stuck in middle management somewhere.
And then some corporation would come buy my land for pennies on the dollar so they could build a bunch of Pizza hut parking garages on the land. And I would retire to Florida where it is way hotter than the 350 degrees I was used to. The Bitter Life of a Pizza Farmer.
ARRRRGGGGGHHHHH
Bitter Pizza Famer Ben
Ben's Bitter Blog 
Ah, such a lovely bucolic dream … and there’d be tangerine trees and marmalade skies, of course!
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I might have acre in the back for lasagna , but no marmalade or tangerine trees. That is my annoying neighbor that has those.
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Brilliant! Count me in!
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Bring your fork and come pick some of the ripest pizza on the planet.
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Hilarious as always! When I saw your new profile picture I started singing “I’m so fancy….can you taste this gold” LMAO But you do look fancy & quite handsome!
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I’m kind of bitter about the picture because it is not the face of a bitter person. That is actually my LinkedIn picture and I had to change it because I’m doing a little blogging for my company and my other gravitar wasn’t quite work appropriate.
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Aww, things never work out for you, do they? I really liked the idea of a Pizza Farm… Well, there’s always pizza flavoured beer! (Seriously, that appears to exist).
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Of course things never work out for me, because of my bitter Karma. I actually don’t drink so pizza flavored beer doesn’t appeal to me, but there is always that Pepsi to go with it.
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I think pizza flavoured beer should ‘t appeal to anyone, actually. It sounds really gross. And karma is a b*tch, but if you collect enough of it, it can help you find really nice shoes (by appealing to your saved up karma you can get nice things done). So who knows, just keep believing and keep trying 🙂
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I will keep trying to get some Karma, but can I used them for video games instead of shoes? I’m not much of a shoe collector.
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Yup, it’s all possible 🙂
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Thank goodness.
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Where would you get the anchovies, not that I really want them?
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The anchovies would be on the back 50. I would make some of my workers handle them.
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Just to make sure you capture all the market you really should include a half acre or so of thin-crust pizzas.
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I don’t think so, Ellenphant. I told you in the post that no pizza should have a thin crust.
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I volunteer as tribute!
And by tribute, I clearly mean that I want to have a pizza garden. I love pizza.
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We could surely use more workers in the old garden. Pizza any time you want too.
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You’d have to plant a few varieties to keep things fresh… maybe a Margherita pizza, a meat marvel and a Hawaiian (unless you’re one of those guys that thinks Hawaiian pizza isn’t “real” pizza. I don’t know. I don’t know your life)
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Oh yeah, there will be many varieties on each acre of land. My favorite will always be pepperoni, and Hawaiian isn’t my favorite, but I certainly don’t think it isn’t real pizza. All pizzas in my garden are real.
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I’m just letting you know right now, that:
A) I am absolutely making that football pizza on Superbowl Sunday.
B) If you actually ever do become a pizza farmer, I will hunt you down and steal from your fields at night.
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A) That sounds awesome and I wish I was part of that party.
B)I will let you know when and where this happens and you will be free to stop by and take one whenever. Just let me know the kind you like and I let you know where on the farm is the best place to poach.
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If I were able to grow Pizza, I would 100% become a gardener!
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That’s what I was thinking. No other kind of garden would entice me to work that hard.
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Pizza garden for the win! 🍕🍕🍕
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It will be like Field of Dreams. People will come from all around to taste of the Pizza Garden.
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Sounds like a dream! 😋
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If I build it, the Pizza lover’s will come.
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Okay, but you know what you could actually do is be a chocolate farmer because cocoa bean really do grow on trees and then I could come by and literally eat you out of house and home and give you something totally different to be bitter about.
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I think I’ll leave the 75% bitter chocolate tree to you and your farm. I’ll stick to the pizza.
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But…but…I’m not a farmer!
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You can be a gardener though. And chocolate would rain down from the skies.
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Wow, pizza farming sounds like a tough gig! Of course, at some point the bottom would drop out of the pizza market and force you to diversify. A life of kids play-barns and a little shop selling artisan locally sourced jam is inevitable. Middle management/office drone is the safe option here…
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It may be hard work, but the fruits of all that labor is actually not fruit for once. It is stuffed crust pizza. At least you have a reward for work hard all day.
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I will give you 5 million dollars to start a pizza garden. (I get all the free pizza I want)
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And I will take that 5 million dollars put it in the bank and use only about 100,000 to start the farm. But I assure you, you will get pizza for life. So much so that your family will complain about pizza every night just like mine.
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Omg!!! ROFLing here..
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I hope that you someday decide to come visit the Pizza farm and try out some fresh picked pepperoni.
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Hehehehe… I surely must do that soon!
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Actually, since you are a food critic, maybe I should let you sample some, and you can write about it on your blog and it can be a world wide phenomenon.
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