How to Make a Pizza in 4 Months
A Story for All Ages by Rev. Aaron McEmrys
Once upon a time a boy named Jaime was in a terrible shipwreck. Waves as big as skyscrapers smashed the ship he was sailing across the Ocean into splinters. Somehow, Jaime managed to climb onto a big chunk of wood from the ship that was floating in the stormy sea. The winds howled and the rain drilled down like thousands of tiny needles and the wild winds drove Jaime’s tiny raft across the sea for many days.
Jaime’s tongue was like a piece of dry chalk in his mouth and he was almost starving when the ocean finally washed him up on the beach of an isolated island thousands of miles from it’s nearest neighbor.
Fortunately for Jaime, the island was home to a tribe of people both wise and good. They took Jaime in like he was their own long-lost son, nursed him slowly back to health and made sure he knew how welcome he was in their community.
It was a good life. Jaime learned their island language and even taught some of them English. He learned how to farm and fish and even grew to love their food, which seemed so strange to him at first. It was almost the perfect life except for one thing: the islanders were probably the only people in the whole world who had never heard of pizza! Can you believe it, a world without pizza?
Jaime had grown up in Chicago, where pizza is not so much a meal as a way of life – and while he had let go of a lot of other things from his past life, he still missed pizza terribly.
The islanders thought he was very funny, at mealtime he would always say things like, “Well, this is pretty good, but did I ever tell you about the pizzas my uncle Dom used to make? Now that was a good pie….
His friends would laugh, having no idea what he was talking about. But his best friend on the island egged Jaime on, asking question after question, “Tell me more of this wonderful thing you call pizza – what is the crust made of? What do you spread on top? How do you bake it?” And everyone would roar with laughter at Jaime’s earnest, poetic and incredibly detailed responses. “But,” Jaime signed, “I will never taste lovely pizza again – there are no pizzarias here, and not even a grocery store…oh well.
Much time passed, and the moon rose and set and rose and set. Soon Jaime realized that he had been on the island for a whole year, and on the next full moon, which hung blue and glowing in the sky like a lamp, all the islanders, all of Jaime’s new community had a big celebration in his honor. It was great, with singing and dancing and races and games.
But nothing could have prepared him for what happened next. A whole bunch of his friends came up with a giant wood platter heaped with…something…that…smelled…like…pizza! Jaime took a deep breath – it was, it really was pizza!
“How did you do it? That’s impossible!”
“Well, my son,” said the wisest of the wise ones, “We listened to you carefully, and we have tried very hard to make it just the way described it to us. We hope you like it, little brother.”
Jaime certainly did like it – it was the best pizza he had ever tasted, and he was so happy he almost started crying.
“But how, how did you do it? Please tell me!”
“Well, it took some work, but here is what we did:
First to make the flour, we had to find a meadow we could turn into a field. We took out all the grass and flowers and then prepared the soil. Then we dropped one wheat seed every six inches into furrows in the soil. We covered all the seeds up, watered them, and let it all sit for three months while the stalks grew.
After three months, when the plants were beginning to brown on the edges, we stopped watering and let the plants sit for another three or four weeks. Once they were all golden brown, we harvested the seeds stalk by stalk and then crushed them between into grain two slabs of heavy rock. We set aside some grain in case we want to plant another crop, and then we ground the rest into flour and took it over to the baking area.
Then we were ready to make the topping. We started by feeding our goats lots of banana leaves, so they would grow strong and healthy, and then we waited until Spring, when all the does have their babies and start making milk. We put the milk in a jar, covered it and then left it in the painted cave for a couple weeks to ferment and turn into what you call cheese. Once it thickened we hung it from a tree for another day to drain.
While the cheese was hanging we all went into the forest and meadows to gather good herbs, and we even got some of what you call salt by scraping the rocks down by the shore.
We mashed up some sweet potatoes, put them on the pie crust and sprinkled on the cheese, herbs and salt and then we baked it.”[1]
“What do you think? Did we do it right? Is it okay?”
Jaime couldn’t speak. Instead he threw himself into the wise ones arms for a big hug. He couldn’t believe anyone cared that much about him, to work so long and hard just to make him a pizza.
And as he ate that pizza, he realized that he had never, ever tasted anything so good.
In time, Jaime became an expert at island pizza making. He learned that there are no shortcuts in nature, and that to make a good pizza or to do anything else worth doing in life, it’s important to take your time, to let the Sun and rain and soil do it’s mysterious, magical work – and to always remember to be grateful for whatever force there is in the universe that makes something as wonderful as pizza possible!
And so Jaime became a very wise man, and whenever there was any kind of celebration at all, he would bake up a huge pizza for everyone to share.
[1] This recipe comes from Jane Poynter’s book, “The Human Experiment” New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2006, p. 187