Thursday, June 14, 2012

Pizza Burger




25 minutes. Please write your answers in the lined test booklet provided.

“Giant burger boasts real pizza flavor! Broil the savory meat mixture atop a big slice of bread or toasted bun halves. Add mozzarella cheese and cherry tomatoes for a return trip to the broiler. Pizza Burger for Two makes a delicious and attractive lunch treat.”

Q: The Pizza Burger is neither Pizza nor Burger. Discuss.

1968 was a confusing time in world history. Mostly people went ape-shit crazy and killed everyone. There were people in space looking at the dark side of the moon and Led Zeppelin started tearing it up. No-one had any civility or rights. People wanted burgers like they always had but now they also wanted pizza. This is how the pizza burger came about. No-one lived with their family anymore so there was no-one around to put a halt to the madness. People were so afraid of being marched off to war that they only used one bun or a big slice of bread, and they’d never seen a real pizza. The cheese used in the photograph is clearly not mozzarella. One of the slices of bread is round and the other one is square, so two loaves of bread were used. The news on TV was so strange that it seemed 2 + 2 didn’t make 4 anymore, so people tried combining things that shouldn’t be combined just to make things make sense again, like mixing pizzas with burgers. It still didn’t make 4. The Age of Reason had come to a screeching halt. The Age of Arithmetic was a bust. A publication called Better Homes and Gardens bettered neither homes nor gardens. The 1970s were still two years off. The management of body hair fell by the wayside among all the confusion. People ate Pizza Burgers and wished they could go back in time and un-eat them. The Pizza Burger is a perfect example of the times. This is my discussion of the Pizza Burger. 

Cooking for Two, Better Homes and Gardens, 1968

Also from this book: Goodnight AsparagusHave A Coronary