Do you eat your Pizza with your hands?

‘Everybody likes pizza! It’s a quick and easy clean-up meal’ – Buddy Valastro

Do you eat with your hands?I’ve always eaten pizza with my hands.  However, once moving to the UK, I noticed more and more people eating it with a fork and knife, which I find a tad strange.  Often when I go out with friends, I always find myself apologizing in advance that I will be eating mine with my hands.

Philistine?

I’ve tried eating it with a fork and knife to look less of a heathen but I find it painstakingly slow, maybe it will slow me down so I eat less but I can’t be bothered.  Isn’t the whole point of the crust so that you can eat it in a similar vein to a sandwich?

I was invited down to Prezzo in St Albans, Herts last week to try out the new menu.  I took the opportunity to take a long time friend so we could have a proper catch up over some food and a glass of wine.  We’ve known each other long enough so I didn’t feel I needed to do the usual, ‘sorry I eat my pizza with my hands’.  The waiter also agreed with me.

Normally, I’m a bit predictable and normally have a Fiorentina Pizza, which is basically a Spinach Pizza with an Egg plopped on top.  But, as a seafood lover, I spotted a Lobster and Prawn option on the menu and asked the waiter which one I should have.  He quickly said, you can’t compare the two and you have to have the Lobster and Prawn one.  He couldn’t have been more right it was absolutely gorgeous.

You expect me to eat all of that?

lobsterandprawnpizza

I wish we would have got a picture of my face when it arrived at the table.  No word of a lie, it was as wide as the table and enough for at least two people and we’d just shared a Bread Board.  Plus, it came with a pizza cutter so I could cut it into slices and dive in with my hands!

Bread Board to Share at Prezzo, St Albans, Herts

I’ve been to a couple of other Pizza chains in St Albans, Herts and have only been to Prezzo once before, but in my opinion Prezzo was far superior.  The others I find a bit chainy, very open plan and clanging with noise.

We had a lovely table, it wasn’t heaving but still felt that we could have a decent conversation without competing with all the background noise, the service was excellent, reasonably priced, great selection of wines and both of our meals were gorgeous.  My friend opted for a Raviolli pasta dish and it was just as nice as my pizza and they were very accommodating when she asked if she could have mushrooms added to it.

So the big question is, do you eat your Pizza with a fork and knife or with your hands?  Please do leave a comment.

 

 

 

How to say sorry when you’ve been rude!

I bet when your neighbour kindly invites you around for dinner with all the other mums on the street you; enjoy the evening, mingle with the guests, laugh and thank them for a lovely evening and you don’t send a couple of derogatory tweets about the other guests throughout dinner? That’s exactly what I did.

No idea why? 
I have no idea what came over me. I really struggle in social situations and get very nervous and end up launching a clanger within minutes. I’m even worse when I’m in a group of mums, probably insecurities. I don’t know what happened, but I’m guessing one of the mums said something parenting wise and instead of disagreeing with that point across the table I sent a tweet challenging their rights to be a parent to potentially thousands of people. Not good!

And to make matters worse, after I was totally rumbled by the mums, I carried on engaging with people on twitter the following day. However, I knew they were nosing at my timeline and I was trying to drop in excuses and justification which only made it worse.

Woof woof
As any guilty party (Wounded Dog Syndrome) we spend the first few hours/days trying to point our fingers at other people in an attempt to get out of a sticky situation. Yes, it wasn’t helpful that a few of the husbands follow me secretly on twitter and took it upon themselves to share hurtful messages with their wives, but that’s a risk I’ve always taken. ‘Don’t put it on twitter unless you can deal with the fall out’, which I am. If it was me, I would have pulled the person up and not exacerbated the situation. But hey, ho, the bottom line is I’m the one who is guilty.

I have apologized, but it may have come across insincere as I was in a mad rush/panic when I learned they had read the tweets even though I had deleted them later in the evening.

What to do?

However, I think this needs a lot more than an ‘I’m sorry’ and as always, I turn to humour. If I can make them laugh I might be able to cross the chasm.

I humiliated them publicly so feel they deserve a public apology. I am truly sorry. I do appreciate they will need time to heal from the hurt but what should I do?

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Women talk!

I can’t remember if I read it somewhere or if someone told me that apparently women use about 20,000 words a day and men use 7,000 and that woman from some cultures, for example Italian ladies, use even more.  I have to admit that I found it believable but was guilty of stereotyping.  However, upon doing further research I’ve learned that this has been discredited and that men and women tend to talk about the same amount and it depends on other variables such as the amount of time they spend in the company of others.  This is the bit that I found interesting.

I tend to spend a large part of my day on my own.  Don’t feel sorry for me, I like my own company.  In the morning I have about 45 minutes with my husband and daughter before she goes to nursery and he goes into the city for work.    Then the rest of the morning is spent on the computer, working and gassing until I head out to work.  I’m an independent IT consultant in education.  On average I drive between 2-3 hours with an hour and a half of training in between.  This is really my only human contact during the day until my husband and daughter return.

So is this why I tweet so much? After some careful calculations we worked out that I tweet about 3000 words a day. Is it a chance to get my daily quota of words out?  Is this why my friends think I’m a foghorn when I see them?  Is this why I pounce on my husband when he comes in from work and natter his ear off?

Perfect gift for Newborns

 

This is NOT a sponsored post in any way.  In fact, I contacted the company, MyBlankets.com, to ask if they minded if I featured it on the blog because I love them so much.

In the last couple of years I’ve purchased at least three Personalised Taggies for my new mummy friends and each and every time they almost cried!  Well, that’s not really hard to do to a sleep deprived mum but…..

A brilliant keepsake for less than £20!

I just wanted to share it with you.  Oh and there is a 10% discount for their Facebook Friends using “myface” plus a chance to see their other personalised gifts.

Heaven is a Cupcake!

Over 10 years ago we had a very drunken conversation in the pub about starting some sort of club.  We threw around the idea of a wine club but in the end we decided to start a book club, which is actually a wine club in disguise and have been going strong ever since.

We meet the first Thursday of every month. Whoever is hosting puts on the food, chooses the next book and the rest of us bring wine.   There is either 10 or 11 of us, I can never remember, woman from all walks of life: dentists, doctors, optometrists, teachers, PR, engineers and lecturers.

Over the years we’ve been through marriages, children, divorces and death, all the normal things that life throws at us.  We’ve experienced every emotion from laughing to crying.  I look forward to it every month and consider these women to be some of my closest friends.

I think the secret to our success is that we don’t take it too seriously; we don’t present the book or have formal questions or ratings.  If we like the book we talk about it a lot, if we don’t, we say it was shit and move on to gossip. I can’t remember the last time I finished a book.

This week we had a special treat.  Lucy from www.heavenisacupcake.net popped around with these gorgeous cupcakes just for us.  They went down a treat and no one noticed that I hadn’t read the book.  Look closely at the detail, she’s even written The Blind Assassin on one of the hand-rolled books.  We were all truly impressed and they tasted divine.

If you have a special occasion coming up and live in Herts do give her a dingle and tell her I sent you.

And if you ever want to start a book club, I’d highly recommend it and I’m more than happy to help.