The future approaches us at 60 minutes an hour.

Richard Seymour

Tree o'clock is always too late or too early for anything you wanted to do.

Jean-Paul Sartre

The steps a man takes from the day of his birth until that of his death trace in time an inconceivable figure.

Jorge Luis Borges

The history of food items which may have served as the roots of modern pizza can be traced to the Greek colonies of Magna Graecia (southern Italy). Such products arguably have their first written mention in Book VII of Virgil's Aeneid:

Their homely fare dispatch’d, the hungry band
Invade their trenchers next, and soon devour,
To mend the scanty meal, their cakes of flour.
Ascanius this observ’d, and smiling said:
“See, we devour the plates on which we fed.”

In the 3rd century BCE, the first history of Rome, written by Marcus Porcius Cato, mentions a "flat round of dough dressed with olive oil, herbs, and honey baked on stones". Further evidence is found in Pompeii, the city "frozen in time" since 79 CE, where archaeologists have excavated shops that closely resemble modern pizzerias.

Though several kinds of flat bread made with flour, often cooked with oil and spices, were familiar to ancient Romans and popular in all the Mediterranean area, they were considerably different from pizza as it is known today. The tomato was still unknown in Europe and the Indian water buffalo, whose milk is used to make the real mozzarella cheese, had not yet been imported to Campania, the area around Napoli (Naples). The crust of pizza is very similar to focaccia bread common in Italian cuisine today.

The tomato was first believed to be poisonous (as some other fruits of the nightshade family are), when it came to Europe in the 16th century. However, by the late 18th century even the poor of the area around Naples added it as an ingredient to their yeast-based flat bread, and the dish gained in popularity. Pizza became a tourist attraction, and visitors to Naples ventured into the poorer areas of the city to try the local specialty.

The first dynasties of Neapolitan pizza makers (Italian: pizzaioli) originate in these years: modern pizza is attributed to baker Raffaele Esposito of Naples in the Italian region of Campania. In 1889, Raffaele Esposito who worked in the pizzeria "Pietro... e basta così" (literally "Peter... and that's enough", established in 1780 and still in activity; now called "Pizzeria Brandi" - Via Chiaia, Salita S. Anna di palazzo ) baked a special pizza especially for the visit of the King Umberto I and Queen Margherita of Savoy. The pizza was very patriotic and resembled the Italian flag with its colors of green (basil leaves), white (mozzarella), and red (tomatoes), and was named Pizza Margherita in honor of the Queen and set the standard by which today's pizza evolved and spread worldwide.

Until about 1830, pizza was sold from open-air stands and street vendors out of pizza bakeries (including "Pietro... e basta così"), but then the world's first true pizzeria, Antica Pizzeria Port'Alba, opened in Naples and is still in business today at Via Port'Alba 18.

Pizza met the aristocratic taste (the King of Naples Ferdinando II of Borbone greatly enjoyed the pizza made by 'Ntuono Testa at Salita S. Teresa) and an even more decided popular favour, establishing itself as a daily course, dinner and supper of the Neapolitans.

An Italian immigrant to the US in 1897 named Gennaro Lombardi opened a small grocery store in New York's Little Italy. An employee of his, Antonio Totonno Pero (also an Italian immigrant) began making pizza for the store to sell. Their pizza became so popular, Lombardi opened the first US pizzeria in 1905 at 53 1/3 Spring Street, naming it simply Lombardi's. The price for an entire pizza was 5 cents, but since many people couldn't afford the cost of a whole pie, they could rather say how much they could pay and they were given a slice corresponding to the amount offered (not unlike the method by which pizza is often sold in Italy today). It was closed in 1984 and then reopened in 1994 a block down, at 32 Spring Street. On November 10th, 2005, Lombardi's celebrated its 100th anniversary by selling pizzas at the 1905 price, 5 cents, for the whole day.

In 1924, Totonno left Lombardi's to open his own pizzeria on Coney Island called Totonno's. Frank Pepe Pizzeria Napoletana opened in New Haven in 1925. Boston was introduced to pizza in 1926 by Anthony Polcari when he opened Pizzeria Regina in Boston's North End. The D'Amore family brought pizza to Los Angeles in 1939. At this point in time in the U.S., pizza consumption was still limited mostly to Italian immigrants.

The international breakthrough came after World War II. Although the birthplace of modern day pizza is Naples, local bakers were at a loss to satisfy the demand from American soldiers. The American troops involved in the Italian campaign took their appreciation for the dish back home.

With its rising popularity in the 1950s, especially in the US, pizza became a component of the growing chain-restaurant industry. Some leading early pizza chains were Shakey's Pizza (inventor of the term pizza parlor; formerly, the term pizzeria was preferred) and Pizza Hut, both founded in 1954, in Sacramento and Wichita, respectively. Some later entrants to the dine-in pizza market were Happy Joe's, California Pizza Kitchen, and Round Table Pizza. Today, the pizza business is dominated by companies that specialize in home delivery, including Domino's, Little Caesar's, and Papa John's. Even Pizza Hut has shifted its emphasis away from pizza parlors and toward home delivery. These national pizza chains often coexist with locally-owned pizza restaurants.

Pizza is also found in supermarkets as a frozen food. Considerable amounts of food technology has gone into the creation of palatable frozen pizzas. The main challenges include preventing the sauce from combining with the dough and producing a crust that can be frozen and reheated without becoming rigid. Modified corn starch is commonly used as a moisture barrier between the sauce and crust. Traditionally the dough is somewhat pre-baked and other ingredients are also sometimes pre-cooked. Lately, frozen pizzas with completely raw ingredients have also begun to appear.

from wikipedia.org


buon appetito

How many "faces" lie hidden, waiting for the time when curious eyes will find them in their secret places. In the heart of a leaf or the bark of a tree. In the frozen pond or the turning sea. In the twist of a chair or the look of a key or the shrivelled skin of an elephant's knee.

Irwin Dermer

If you look at certain walls covered with stains and built of mingled stones ... you will ... discern provinces with their mountains, their rivers, rocks, trees, plains, great valleys, hills in many aspects ... battles and the swift movement of faces and singular expressions, clothes and innumerable other things.

Leonardo Da Vinci

I loved a certain Svetlana in Mostar one autumn
If only i knew whom she was sleeping with now
I’d chop her I’d chop her
If only i knew who was kissing her now
I’d knock his I’d knock his
Ah if i knew who picking apricots
Still unripe in me


I was telling her you are a child you are green
I was telling her everything
And she wept on my hands at may words
I was telling her you are an angel you are a devil
Your body is ripe don't pretend to be a saint
And all night blue rains were raining over Mostar

There was no sun no birds there was nothing
She asked me whether I had a brother what I studied
Whether I was a Croat whether I love Rilke she asked everything
She asked me if I could do the same with every girl god forbid
She asked me in a low voice if I loved her
And blue rains were falling over Mostar
She was luxuriously white in the dark of the room
But she wouldn't give she wouldn't
Or she didn't dare devil knows

It is autumn that dead autumn in window-panes
Her eyes a bird her thighs a doe
She had a mole a mole she had i dare not say
She had a mole small and violet or so it seems to me
She asked me if I was a Croat if i had a girl
If I loved Rilke she asked me everything
While in the window like Christmas bells of my childhood water
Drops rang
And a night song softly along downtown
Hey Suleman mother's son

She spread her years upon the floor
Her eyes were full ripe peaches
Her breasts were warm as puppies
I told her she was stupid she was putting on airs
Svetlana Svetlana do you know this is the atomic age
De Gaulle Gagarin and such nonsense i told her everything
She wept she wept

I took her to the bazaar dives
I took her everywhere
I hid her in caves carried her to a balcony
Under bridges we played hide and seek the Neretva a filly
Under an old bridge i spoke of Crnjanski
How marvellous he is how marvellous

I drew her knees in wet sand
She laughed so merrily so innocently like first lilies
I took her to mosques Karadjoz bey dead too dead
Under his heavy tomb
So Shantich's grave she carried some flowers cried a little
Like a women
I took her everywhere

It is this summer now
I am now quite different I write some poems
In a newspaper half a column for Pero Zubac and nothing more
And all the night blue rains were falling over Mostar
She was luxuriously white in the dark of the room
But she wouldn't give she wouldn't
Or she didn't dare devil knows

That sky those clouds those roofs
The pale sun of the hungry boy over Mostar
I can't forget
Nor her hair her small tongue like a strawberry
Her laughter which could hurt like a curse
That player in the chapel on the white fill
God is great she said he will outlive us
Nor those heavy blue rains
Oh autumn her barren autumn

She spoke of films of James Dean
She spoke about everything a bit sadly a bit pathetically
Or Karenina
She said Clyde Griffiths could not
Hurt a fly
I laughed you are stupid he is a murderer you are a child of
But those streets those news-boys selling the latest edition of
Liberation
Those half withered grapes in shop-windows I can't forget
That bitter barren autumn over Mostar those rains
She kissed me all night long and caressed me and nothing more
I swear by my mother we did nothing more

After that summers came again rains came again
Only one short letter from Ljubljana why there
Those leaves on pavements those days
I can't I don't know how
To erase

She writes she asked me what I do how I live if I have a girl
Whether I ever think of her and of that autumn of those rains
She is now the same she swears by god quite the same
Shall I believe her shall I laugh I cursed Christ a long time ago
And I don't quite love her whether she swore or not
It must be so lies are worth lees

I talked to her of Lermontov Chagall I told her everything
She carried with her on old zweig's book read in the afternoon
Her hair was threaded with summer the yellow colour of the
Sun a little of the sea
First night her skin was also somewhat salty fish asleep
In her blood
We laughed at the boys who were jumping from bridges for
Cigarettes
We laughed because it was not summer and they were jumping
They are real children
She said they could die they could get pneumonia

Then her long too long silences came
I could freely think about anything explain Spinoza
For hours I could look at others at leisure throw stones
Down rock I could also go somewhere go far away
I could have died alone on her breasts more lonely than anyone
I could have turned into a bird water a rock
I could have done all this

Her fingers were long weak bloodless but quick
We played lady-bird and hide and seek
Svetlana get out you are under the rock i am not blind
I am not stupid come up don't hesitate you'll be beaten
When it was her turn I could flee into the river itself she would
Find me
She smells me immediately she says she knows me well
I never believed her she may have peeped through her fingers
She liked chestnuts we picked them round about
She carried them to the room hung them on threads
She loved roses those autumn roses I brought her
When they withered she would put them into a tin

I asked her what she thought oh this world whether she believed
In communism
Whether she would like to be Natasha Rostova I asked her
Everything
Sometimes stupid questions I know that only too well
I asked her whether she'd like a small son blond say
She jumped from enthusiasm yes, yes
And all of a sudden she was overpower by grief like dead fruits
She mustn't she mustn't she wouldn't do that for her life
Do you hear him he thinks it's so easy as if i had fallen from
Jupiter
Who then is that Zubac Pera that he should be that men and
Not somebody else
By no means he thinks he is at least Brando or such a one

I told her you are stupid you are clever you are a devil
You are an angel Itold her everything she believed nothing
You men are born liars you are rascals
She said everything
And blue rains were falling over Mostar
I really loved that Svetlana one autumn
If only I knew who she was sleeping with now I’d chop his
I’d chop his if only i knew who was kissing her now
I’d knock his I’d knock his alas if only i knew who
Was picking apricots still unripe in me

Pero Zubac