Friggin’ biology! Without its biological processes, there’d be no yeast. Without yeast, there’d be no dough. Without dough, there’d be no…PIZZA! Crap….Friggin’ biology!
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Yeast!?
The signs were there way long before my Pre-Med advisor, Dr. Lundgren, says, “You’re doing well in chemistry and physics, and you’re one of our best in math, but unless you take some biology, you’re not going to Med-School.”
My simple reply, “Friggin’ biology, I can’t touch the frogs.”
So, you see, we needed to dissect frogs in 1st year Biology and ID its parts. But there I was in 2nd year with no biology completed classes (although, I started a couple!). Frogs and bugs just skeeved/skeeve me (for definition see here). Even today, Cathy has to kill all the bugs in the house!
SKEEVE…SKEEVE…SKEEVOZ! (Hmm…sounds like the making of a 70s song Carm? Donnie?).
Friggin’ biology!
The signs went back 8 years earlier to 6th grade Science with Mrs. Higley. Science was not Mrs. Higley’s forte, but she was an awesome English teacher. She taught us to diagram a sentence. It was the first “English Thing” to make sense to me. Diagraming revealed a level of verbal organization for which my obsessed and compulsed brain yearned.
Anyways…Mrs. Higley’s science assignment was to draw a yeast. Having little interest in biology (which is funny, both of my kids majored in biology), I wasn’t listening during lessons on bacteria, viruses, and yeasts. You see, 6th grade was my first year of organized, tackle football. I was probably doodling at my desk and drawing goal posts, helmets, and uniforms. I was ADHD way before there was such a thing!
Besides, with a 64 color box of crayons to memorize who could listen about Mrs. Higley’s yeast…(wasn’t there a douche for that?). Therefore, my drawing resembled this:
That’s a yeast cake! Ma (Grandma Joanne) used fresh yeast cakes for dough. So, when I got home from Mother of Sorrows (an appropriate name for a Catholic school!), I pulled out a yeast cake from the fridge and drew a perfectly squared-off cuboid with a sharpened #2 and ruler! I probably used some of the browns and oranges from the box of 64!
ASIDE – why was there a “flesh” color in the 64? And whose flesh color was it? Certainly not my Southern Italian, with a helping of Moorish North African, blood.
Truly, it never occurred to me that she was asking for a drawing like this:
Like I said, the signs were there all along! Friggin’ biology…but thank goodness for pizza!
Nebaletan Word of the Day – Minest
It’s been friggin’ cold in FL. I know, “Stop whining!” It’s been cold enough to not want to ride. It’s also damp. Add those together, it feels like March in Rochester…ouch!
March in Rochester is my least favorite; couldn’t plan to ski, couldn’t plan to bike, running in the wind and rain sucked. The only plan was to stay indoors and wait and hope, and worse, SWIM!
One way to ease the whining is the universal cold weather food – soup. While growing up, there was one favorite – minest! Minest (pronounced Min-est) in Nebaletan. In formal Italian, minestra (min-es-tra) means soup in the generic sense. Whereas minest is not just any generic soup, it was a particular soup in our family.
Minest has a broth base, usually vegetable, with a crap load of greens usually escarole and/or chard. My mother’s (Grandma Joanne) recipe included chopped carrots and celery, garlic, and onion along with chunks of pepperoni (aka Neapolitan salame), ham, and tiny meatballs. Sometimes my dad (Grandpa Tony) would make the minest. Since Grandpa Tony grew up during the heart of The Depression, just about anything in the refrigerator was game for his recipe!
Minest is NOT Wedding Soup. Although similar, both (in our case) have greens, pepperoni and tiny meatballs, but that’s where it ended. Strictly speaking, Wedding Soup is also a minestra (soup), but it’s not my family’s minest.
Once again, I consulted with my cousin Bonita who knew the recipe for minest off the top of her head! I also reached out to Donnie and Carmen. Carm seemed to know his mother’s recipe off the top of his head, while Donnie was NOT A FAN of minest saying it “look[ed] like polluted water”! How dare he?!
Pizza Review – V Pizza, Palm Valley (Ponte Vedra/Jacksonville, FL)
| Date | 1/27/24 |
| Pizzeria | V Pizza |
| City/Neighborhood | Palm Valley (Ponte Vedra (Jacksonville), FL) |
| Website | V Pizza – Authentic Italian Brick Oven Pizza & Restaurant |
| About Us | Our Journey to Becoming the Best Pizza Place – V Pizza Lots of marketing mumble jumble and buzz words about Neapolitan Pizza (although many of the words are in the right direction). But there’s no personalization. No “why are we making pizza”. No, passion about the process. And, there’s nothing about the people that started the joint leaving the impression that this is a small conglomerate wanting to be a larger conglomerate. |
| Style | Neapolitan |
| Ambiance | Two sides, sit down restaurant (which didn’t scream pizzeria) and walk up/sit down area. Not wanting to wait 40 minutes, we chose the walk-up section, but we still had table service, just not as fancy. The walk-up was much more pizzeria-ish The ambiance of the Walk-Up side was a mish-mash motif of a Country Western saloon while country music was playing; cum Coastal Florida vibe; cum Quartieri Spagnoli (Spanish Quarter, see here) in Napoli. It included faux rustic Italian provincial tables but with western style metal chairs and high-back perimeter booths. As you might expect, I chose to believe we were in the Quartieri Spagnoli! Even though my order and organization obsessed mind wished that they’d make up their mind on their preferred motif, it was actually quite cool! Spoke at length with pizzaiolo, says dough is made daily by an old Sicilian guy (I couldn’t tell if he was fibbing, but I’ll go with that too!) |
| Beverage Pairing | Water, Red wine |
| Rating Criteria | |
| Shape | Round – website says they bake 13″ pizzas, ours were as large as 14″! |
| Dough/Crust | Tickness = thin Cook = soft, bubbly, chewy Flavor = slight char Nicely done textures, but the dough/crust was low in flavor and was “heavy” (poor digest ability). These problems are common with most same day doughs (remember the old Sicilian guy from above?) Slightly sweet maybe from sugar which is also the signature of same day dough |
| Cornicione | Crispy, spongy, bubbly, chewy Once again, a very nicely done texture, but lacked flavor As I’ve mentioned in many of my recent reviews, the dough/crust’s taste can be better as cold, day-old pizza. That was not the case with V Pizza crust. |
| Toppings | One pizza had pepperoni Both – moozedell which was fantastic Bufala milk, oregano, parmagian, basil Fresh = yes for moozedell and basil, but couldn’t tell with the parmagian (it was in a large bowl and sprinkled by hand onto the pizza) |
| Sauce | On the Margherita – it was thin, plain, no zip or tang or body although the sauce is better in area with and adjacent to fresh basil Different sauce on pepperoni, ticker and richer. Noticed multiple sauce bins, a consistency issue? |
| Cheese | Cheese Type – bufala moozedell and parmagian Cheese Distribution – all over for the parmagian, splotchy for the moozedell Buttery taste for the moozedell!!!! |
| Cheese to Sauce Ratio | Sauce – a little to medium Cheese – a little to medium Balance – good |
| Value | Good – $17.50 for our 13″ (which was actually 14″) so that’s about $13 for a 12″ equivalent |
| Overall Rating | Good (but not great) – V Pizza was another place that I’d hoped would be Great. Despite its value and atmosphere, ultimately, it’s the pizza that makes or breaks a place, and V Pizza was just not a great pizza. The dough and sauce lacked the umph that separates the Good from the Great. |
| Would I Go Back? | Maybe We’ve spent little time in the Jacksonville area, but likely will in the future, there are probably many other joints to visit…can’t wait! |
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