New Favorite Pizza Place

We ordered a pizza from Zing Pizza tonight. And it was a smashing success. They offer four pizzas at any given time. Tonight we got half cheese (the John Dough) and the other half the Blue October. And it was wonderful!

First of all, it totally delicious. The Blue October was an amazing combination of fresh ingredients while still tasting like pizza. I will be sad to see this one inevitably rotate off their menu.

The pizza comes in a rectangular shape roughly 1 foot by 2 feet. The price struck me as a bit steep, but since we usually order Upper Crust for our "fancy" pizza, I took it as par for the course in Cambridge for gourmet pizza. However, what you get is practically the equivalent to 2 thin crust pizzas. So the $19 that it cost to have it delivered (including the $2 delivery fee but not including tip) seems very reasonable.

I also am a fan of thin crust pizza that isn't droopy, since I want to be able to put a slice of pizza in front of my 2 year old and watch her eat it. I don't want to have to feed it to her because her small hands can't keep it from collapsing all over the front of her, or worse, the floor or carpet or furniture which is often where the pizza gets eaten when we're in a "pizza party" frame of mind. And I don't want to have to cut it up into pieces. I just want to hand her a piece of pizza and not watch her struggle. And not only did she handle the pizza like a pro, she couldn't get enough. Literally, after our friends left, I kept nibbling on a small wedge here and a left-over square there and each time she would spot me in the midst of my first bite and commandeer the slice. I was very happy to see her eat so much.

And last but not least, I LOVE their eco-friendly practices. They use organic and local ingredients whenever possible and compost all of their waste.

So Zing has done right by me and has replaced Upper Crust as our "go to" fancy pizza place. Visiting friends and family will no doubt benefit greatly from this discovery.

Green Things Part 1

Here are some Green Things I'm currently trying:

Composting

Cambridge, MA just seems to rock when it comes to embracing efforts to protect the environment. They allow recycling of almost all of the plastic that we buy (#1-6). If it weren't the Gerber food that we buy for occasional supplementing of Thora's diet, I'm not sure what plastic we'd have to throw away. (As it is, though, I compulsively re-use the Gerber plastic food containers, so few have gone to the landfill.)

And this spring the City of Cambridge instituted a pilot program for composting. While I've been collecting our scraps, I've yet to take them to the drop-off location. This is clearly one of the annoyances that will plague this effort in environmentalism. For now, there are limited opportunities to drop off one's compost. And it's a bit of hike. Will I be able to carry my compost (right now in a double-layer paper grocery bag) the mile or so with the stroller? Compost can get heavy, as the water in the food sinks to the bottom. So we'll see. My plan is to try this tomorrow, during their drop-off time in the early evening. Otherwise, I'll need to go, with Sean, in the car on Saturday.

Regardless of the hassle, I'm feeling motivated about composting. As the city's website says: "By recycling food, we reduce methane emissions at landfills that result from decaying organic matter. Methane is 23 times more potent than carbon dioxide! Our goal is to divert at least 400 pounds/week, avoiding about 20,000 pounds of CO2 per year." (DPW) So it appears that composting is better for the environment than using a garbage disposal--something on first thought I figured was just as earth-friendly. And additionally, we've never recycled things like paper towels. I'm hoping that composting proves, if not as easy as recycling, not too troublesome. I'd really like to see the pilot program succeed.