This Is Not A Pizza

IMG_7874
This photo is blurry because it’s hard to focus when you’re hungry.

“We’re going to Pizza Hut tonight with Donna, Glyn and Grandad,” I told Tracey. “I’ve booked us in.”

“I’m fine with that,” said Tracey. “Are you?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?” I asked.

I love pizzas. I consider them superior, A-grade, premium cheese toasties.

Sadly, though, we won’t have many opportunities to have these sorts of conversations in the future. Our local Pizza Hut is closing for renovations soon and they aren’t reopening with the all-you-can-eat sit down option. Worse still, the closest Sizzler is an hour away.

This is a big mistake, Mr Hut.

There’s only a handful of your Dine-ins left in Australia and I swear my cousins, Donna & Glyn, come all the way from Canberra just to visit this place and gorge themselves on your fancy cheese toasties. That we’re in town is viewed more as a pleasant coincidence.

“I’m just wondering what you’ll eat,” Tracey said to me. “Since, you know….”

“Shit.”

Which, as a description of my meal, was pretty close.

...in a perfect world.
…in a perfect world.

I’m two weeks into a six week low GI diet because I’m having my gallbladder removed and (apparently) have shit on my liver (fat). My diet includes no beer, no added sugar, no flavour, no smiling and no white bread. So by extension, no pizza with beer.

And if I’m honest, the worst part of that is the no beer one because hops flavoured barley water is how I keep my fluids up.

When my surgeon explained the diet to me he asked me what I drink.

“Beer,” I told him.

“Much?”

“Enough to batter a whale.”

“Well, you can still have one occasionally,” he said.

“No,” I assured him. “I can’t.”

Which is why I’ve now gone two and a half weeks on cups of unsweetened tea and coffee, and also why I didn’t even get to wash my carrot sticks and assorted rabbit food down with a decent beverage. Not that I didn’t have opportunities to break my diet and risk that one drink if I wanted it.

“You want a beer, Bruce?” Dad asked me when the girl came to take our order.

“Can’t,” I reminded him.

The first time he asked I figured it was a slip. He’s old and withered and smells like footy socks.

The second time I wondered if he was going senile – that maybe his old man smell was rotting his brain.

By the third time I realised he was enjoying himself way too much.

“Get stuffed,” I told him, and he giggled his way to the bar.

Meanwhile I had a lot going on to distract me from eating or drinking anything which might ease my hunger pains. Specifically, kids.

“Stop licking your elbow,” I had to say to Miss4.

She’d upended her clam edged mini-bowl they give you for dessert (also something I couldn’t partake in).

“But I got ice-cream on it,” she told me.

“We’re not at home,” I explained to her. “You can go and get more.”

IMG_7860

A good thing I reminded her too, because there was a scoop under her chair which I’m sure she’d have got to once she’d finished gnawing on her sleeve.

“Bruce,” said Grandad, grabbing my attention away from suggesting firmly to Miss6 she didn’t need a second litre of soft drink. “You want a beer?”

“You know where you can stick that beer?” I suggested.

“Yep,” he grinned, shuffling back to his chair. “Over here next to my pizza.”

We really need to get him out more. He was having a great time.

Anyway as I said, our local Pizza Hut is closing down and, much to the horror of my kids, wife, father and cousins, won’t reopen with an all-you-can-eat area.

Which I’ve now decided is perfectly fine by me.

Nothing but unpleasant memories of the place, if I’m honest.

IMG_7868
Nothing like looking up from the table when it’s time to go home and seeing this to get everyone moving out the door.

“Raising a family on little more than laughs”

Sharing is caring. Plus it really does make a difference. Thanks heaps.

What do you think?

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.