Pizza Pie

Do you remember the first time you ate pizza? You might if you are over 60. Most people think pizza has always been around. Not so! I remember in the early 1950's hearing Dean Martin singing: "When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that's amore". That song set America singing and eating pizzas. I had never heard of "pizza pie" and I thought he was saying "piece of pie" and I didn't know what "amore" meant. I liked the song and the lively tune. Then one day I discovered what he was saying and I laughed.

I remember the first time I ever had pizza. Some friends invited us to have dinner at an Italian restaurant in Wurzburg, Germany one evening in 1954. They suggested we try the pizza pie and I wasn't sure I would like it. I had planned on ordering Italian spaghetti. One bite of the delicious cheese and tomato mixture on hard bread was all I needed to get hooked on pizza.

We came back to the US in the summer of 1955 and soon we started seeing pizza on menus of restaurants in Kansas where we lived for awhile. I think maybe soldiers stationed in Europe, especially in areas near Italy, loved pizza and brought the idea back to the US. When our boys were small, we made pizza from Chef Boyardee kits. We would mix the crust and knead it out on the round pizza pan and add the sauce from the box. I always added extra cheese and sometimes cooked hamburger meat or sausage. When they were older, growing up in Paris, TX, there were pizza restaurants and I stopped making the box kind.

Now we are living in a small town without a pizza restaurant and I have resorted to buying frozen pizzas, and again adding extra ingredients. Our favorite is Tombstone pizza.

And everytime I start to take a bite, I can hear Dean Martin singing that song "When the moon hits your eye, etc." and I chuckle.