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There really is very little to it. Just make the dough, prepare the tomato sauce, get the toppings together, get the oven up to temperature, assemble the pizza, cook and serve, right?

Wrong. Oh so very, very, very, very wrong. If you want a quick pizza ring Domino’s. If you want the best pizza you have ever tasted, read on my friends, read on. The down-side is that preparing pizza for two is a lot of work for one. Particularly when I am the one doing the working.

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Local French goat's cheeseMany visitors to that fine country have no understanding of the national psyche of the French. They are a very proud nation with an incredibly rich history and more culture than one might find in a Roquefort cheese. Tourists wrestle with the concept of the entire country closing every day between noon and three. They also don’t follow the reasons for the early start in the day and everything remaining closed on Sunday.  The divide is prised open by foreigners who speak loudly in English while affecting a stage French accent “No, garçon, we want a pot of tea for two.” or “Non, J’ai asked for it to be cooked medium. This est rare.”

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My friend Michael Houseright asked me to guest post over at The Blissful Adventurer while he was away in Italy last month. I  thought I should throw it up here too. (Visit Michael’s new blog or he will kill me for reposting without telling him.)

My tale begins 127 years ago. The story goes that Giuseppe Cerve came to Ireland from Casalattico in central Italy. He came here with very little, to find a better life for his family. He began selling potatoes cooked in oil from a barrow. We Irish liked it so much that he soon opened Ireland’s first ‘Chipper’ where he began selling fish and chips. An Irish Italian tradition was born.

A rare photo of Giuseppe Cerve’s original Chip Shop. This image from the collection of the late Barbie Borza.

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Don’t get me wrong. I really, really, really appreciate the various awards I have received from fellow bloggers. I am even grateful for the couple that my blogging daughter has bestowed upon my blog. Though, I do  have a problem. The Versatile Blogger Award asks that each recipient passes it on to 15 others. Let me explain first with a bit of maths:

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In our advertising agency business we try to maintain reasonably high ethical standards. We like to get paid for what we do. We like to pay our business partners in a timely fashion and we don’t expect any special treatment. We don’t approve of inducements.

For you fans of Don Draper in Mad Men, please note that he is showing how it was back in the 50s and 60s not how it is today. I know this because I was around for the tail end of all that. It was a daft business back then. Standards were not what they are today.

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Free Range Eggs smallBack when Adam was a boy (the early 1950s) the British were encouraged to ‘Go to work on an egg’. This was a great advertising campaign built around a fantastic piece of copywriting. Having Tony Hancock in front of the camera helped a bit too.

In my business life, I have had the dubious pleasure of writing copy for various Easter advertisements featuring ‘Eggstravaganza’ in the headline. This usually followed up with ‘eggciting offers’ ‘cracking deals’ and other eggscrutiating word plays. 

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Not many people know me well. I’m a pretty private kind of guy with a narrow focus of interests. Those who do know me, know that I am not big on self promotion. I rarely coddle myself with dramatic expressions of ego centric boastfulness or vulgar displays of self-congratulatory indulgence.

By writing this blog, I have allowed a certain number of you to lift a small corner of the dark shroud that envelops my being. That comfort blanket that has protected me from slights and emotional injury has been raised ever so slightly. I have been nervous about it being lifted. I have viewed each comment on my various posts with foreboding, nervous that more of my inner self will be exposed. All that was until late last week……

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My eldest is very competitive. Some say, too competitive. When she started her travel blog, Shallow Pockets Travel, I helped her out where I could. I learned a lot by the process. In fact, that is what prompted me to start this blog. My experience previously was restricted to our company blog.

For a time, all went along well. Eldest daughter (ED) enthused about her latest post and numbers of hits and so forth. I offered fatherly encouragement to her endeavor. Meanwhile, I quietly worked away cooking, photographing, writing and posting in my free time. All was well in our little blogosphere and in our home. Or was it?

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I am a Dubliner, born and bred inside the Pale. I am proud of my roots, my history and most things Dublin. Some of our country cousins can begrudge us the privileges we enjoy from living in the ‘Big Smoke’. We have, amongst other attractions, the Luas electric tram system, an airport with two terminals, the Guinness Brewery and the boat to England.

It is traditional and reasonable for us Jackeens, as the Culchies like to call us, to suffer some inter-county hostility. Some of the rural dwellers believe that Cork is the real capital of the country. Others think that Galway is the cultural axis on which the world revolves. I refute these and many other illegitimate claims against our capital city. I am well brought up and I will not mention Dublin being the All Ireland Football Champions at present. That would be churlish.

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