thai people top it with ketchup

I have never liked pizza. (Yes. I'm a communist. Happy?)

As a child I wouldn't eat it at all. Everyone said that going to college would cure me of that--how could one go to college without eating pizza?

It didn't.

Going to college, where Little Caesar's had made some kind of back room deal with the food service department, so that students could order pizzas with the money from our meal plans, taught me that pizza delivery places will make pizzas without cheese! Bread, sauce, and vegetables--almost as good as a plate of spaghetti. No grease, no nasty cheese burns on the roof of my mouth. This was the pizza for me.

My friends thought I was crazy; the Little Caesar's guy kept trying to assure me that they had lactose-free cheese and I didn't have to "do without."

I was happy until I discovered the purpose of the cheese: to hold all the tasty mushrooms on the pizza so they don't fall off and splash sauce on your shirt every time you take a bite! This, however, only convinced me I'd better eat my cheeseless wonder with a knife and fork. I was steadfast.

Then I got married.

I married a normal person. That is, one who likes to eat pizza. This is when I decided that pizza, like loud music coming from upstairs and failed internet connections, was one of those things I could put up with on occasion. Marriage is about compromise, right? Well, if Husband could eat my failed kitchen experiments (remind me to tell you about the one he calls "ass soup"), I could eat pizza every now and then. Ah, wedded bliss.

Moving to Thailand has done what college, projectile mushrooms, and marriage could not: I now look forward to eating pizza. I think it's because it's American. Husband and I have also both started eating olives. We used to pick them out of our salads in restaurants; now we both eat them. Likewise, pizza.

Since we've been here, our town has become slightly more farang-friendly in the way of food. A pizza place has opened up near the university. Friends who own a restaurant nearby tell us that this pizza place has been raking it in hand over fist; turns out my relatives were right about pizza and college students, just not about me.

I can't look at their advertisements--they're so repulsive! Pizza with corn. Pizza with squid. Pizza with little hot dogs inside the crust all along the outside edge. But they do make a reasonable facsimile of American pizza: it has mushrooms and green peppers, and you just have to tell them to hold the corn and pineapple. Husband and I have ordered this pizza twice, and both times I've enjoyed it much more than I expected to. This is despite the fact that I can tell that the cheese, the sauce, and the crust are all inferior to pizza I've eaten with much less enjoyment in the U.S. The difference? Now it tastes like home.

(And yes, it does come with little packets of ketchup, which is intended to be squirted over the top of your piping hot slice. I've seen my students do it. Yeccchh!)