Recently, I was expecting dinner guests and I didn’t have a plan for the meal.  This happens every now and then and, when it does, I usually resort to something I can practically do in my sleep.  Maybe tacos.  Maybe spaghetti.  No, let’s do pizza again. 

I know what my family likes on their pizzas so I normally just make them according to what I know to be their taste preferences.  If I’m making two pizzas, I might make one with half pepperoni and the other half pepperoni and Italian sausage.  The other pizza might be an “everything pizza”, meaning all of the veggies and assorted meats.  I might slip some anchovies in on the other half of the “everything pizza”, but I have to make sure to put up warning cones around that half of the pizza and announce, “this side has anchovy!” 

It never fails, someone always inadvertently gets a slice with some anchovy.  Life is unfair sometimes.

But, this time I didn’t know what all of the guests like on their pizza…or even if they liked pizza at all, for that matter.  So I thought, why not lay out all of the toppings and allow the guests to dress their own pizza.

I prepared the vegetables and meats and cheese and I even put out a container or marinara, so that they could add as much as they wanted.

It turned out that the dinner party fizzled out and it was just my wife and I.  We wound up making nearly identical pizzas…go figure.

I still think this is a pretty neat idea for a party.  It allows people to congregate in the kitchen, which seems to occur naturally, anyway.  And, it gives everyone the illusion of being able to control their own destiny.  I like that.