Tales of Pizza: Part One: Chef Boyardee

Pizza! Wow, I have so many great memories of pizza and while I don't remember my first slice I can still reach pretty far back into the vaults for some good times. I'm going to recall these moments in a new series with stories of my most influential pizzalicious memories.

Chef Boyardee pizza kits!  I'm sure they have come a long way since it hit supermarket shelves in the 50s. Hell I'm sure it has come a long way since my siblings and I used to make it with my mom in the 80's. and 90's. The Chef Boyardee Pizza Kit is definitely one of my earliest pizza memories. It was one of the first things remember learning to cook by myself.

I remember so vividly  helping my mom and taking turns mixing that greasy ball of dough. I remember that little can of super salty sauce with those tiny pepperoni slices, that paper envelope of cheese powder, that bland and crispy crust. I remember  watching it bake into this crispy orange disc. My siblings and I  would wait with watering mouths as the house filled up with the smell of that pizza. I can still pick out the smell of a Chef BOY-AR-DEE pizza anywhere, any time.

To our delight my mom would occasionally add olives or mushrooms or real pepperoni. On the nights when she added extra cheese we were in heaven. Some times I pick up a pizza kit at the store and though my pizza palette has improved leaps and bounds over the years it always brings up good memories. 

I recently spoke with my mom about the Chef Boyardee pizza kit. She told me that when she was a kid, pizza was not a regular player in her family's menu. But, on nights when my granddad would work late, my grandma would sometimes break out a CB pizza kit. She thought maybe it was because my grandpa didn't like pizza. And you know i can sort of vaguely remember thinking the same thing about him when I was a kid.

Mom also told me that she and our uncle Bob would make a b-line for pizza whenever they went to the beach as a family. She loves to tell me that story, about how when she would go to the beach all she wanted to eat was pizza. I guess the apple doesn't fall too far from the tree.

SEE ALSO: Slice: Adam Kuban's trip down memory lane with Chef Boyardee