Why am I shopping for a pizza oven I’m unlikely to use?
I’ve been obsessively searching the web for the best home pizza oven. Looks like it’s an Ooni Koda 2, a propane-powered beauty. That settled, I’m now hunting down the best price for the required accessories, such as a waterproof cover (the Ooni would live on the back deck), a metal peel, and an infrared thermometer gun. When the gun tells me that the interior of the oven has reached 900o F, I’ll pop in the pizza. And in 60 to 90 seconds a glorious pie with a blistered, slightly charred crust will emerge. How utterly easy!
Once I set up the Ooni I have no doubt that we’ll be eating fabulous pizza once or twice a week. For maybe a month or so. Then, not quite as often. And by the time the frost hits the waterproof cover, the oven will probably sit dormant over the winter. And well into next spring, when the cover will be dusted with a layer of sticky yellow-green tree pollen.
This likely sequence reminds me of my intense but brief love affair with pickled red onions. For years I’ve swooned over their crunch and bite when they’re served on veggie burgers or with salads. Some months ago it suddenly occurred to me that I could actually make some myself. So I collected a bunch of online recipes, modified them to create a version that seemed just right, and produced a batch. They were a knockout! We went through the whole mason jar’s worth in a matter of days. Immediately I made another round, which lasted far longer. In fact, the remnants of Batch No. 2 might still be lurking somewhere in the recesses of the fridge. I recall how lovely those pickled onions were, and how dead easy they are to make. So why did I poop out on their production and consumption?
That story recalls another one: we recently replaced the worn carpets in my office and our bedroom with beautiful engineered oak flooring. Today Annie made the point that we need to know how best to clean them. Another flurry of online activity determined that the favored method is to spray them with a gentle floor cleaning solution, then gently scrub with a microfiber mop. The O’Cedar mop with an integrated spray device perfectly fit the bill: squirt, scrub and you’re done. What could be easier? I ordered one online. But just as I clicked “buy,” I thought—hmm…mop…hmm microfiber cloths. And the neurons flashed—Swiffer! I’d totally forgotten that years ago we’d bought a Swiffer microfiber floor sweeper. It looked so good that I ordered a big supply of replacement cloths at a great price (in case you wondered, they’re not compatible with the O’Cedar mop). I was sure I’d be effortlessly tidying up the wood floors in the kitchen and dining room nearly every day. And I probably did, for about as often as I produced those pickled red onions. Anyway, I can’t wait until the O’Cedar arrives so I can start mopping the new wood floors. I know it will be a lot of fun, and so easy-peasy!
Back to the food realm, here’s another curious example of losing steam for no apparent reason: We’ve become moderately addicted to Grillo’s pickles–fresh and crunchy, and oh so much flavor (that’s my take, not their tagline). We started with the regular variety, but soon found we liked the spicy version even better. Dissecting the juice revealed dill, garlic, grape leaves, and the spicy secret: bright orange slices of habaneros! While gripped in Grillo fever we made an exciting discovery: Costco sold them! Inevitably, the Costco version involved a much bigger container, and the cost per pickle was far less. But sadly, they stocked only the regular variety. So I had the bright (though admittedly obvious) idea of cutting up a habanero or two and chucking the slicings into the Costco containers. Worked a treat, and we had the best of both worlds—cheap Grillos that were also nice and spicy. Well, that’s how it went for two or three trips to Costco. Then, though we still buy the pickles, for some reason I stopped adding the habaneros. Why? Who knows—surely picking up a habanero at the grocery store isn’t a very high hurdle, nor is putting on a pair of exam gloves and cutting it up for installation in a pickle container.
Alas, the pattern doesn’t stop there. I recall, among other things, my determination to meditate regularly, eat a big healthy bowl of steel cut oats for breakfast, and publish a blog post every two weeks. At some point I did all those things according to schedule. At least for a few weeks.
It makes me feel slightly better to note that every January a slew of articles in the papers and online are published bemoaning the fact that almost everyone fails to keep their New Year’s resolutions. Behavioral psychologists, psychotherapists, and efficiency experts are asked to share their wisdom on how to make our resolutions stick. Undoubtedly the advice is widely read. And undoubtedly it makes little difference. I wonder how many of these gurus manage to keep their own resolutions.
So why, you might well ask, knowing all I know, am I still thinking of buying that Ooni oven? History makes it a near certainty that sooner or later—and most likely sooner—it will go the way of the habaneros, the Swiffer, and the pickled red onions. But wait! Speaking of pickled onions, after writing about how easy it was to make them, I actually just put up a batch. They turned out just as well as I remembered, yum! And now that I think of it, I bet they’d be really tasty on a slice of homemade pizza!