Trader Giotto's Pizza Parlanno

Joshua is like "eh"

Trader Joe's pizzas haven't let me down at all in the past.  Matter of fact I had just had one that took me on a magic journey. However this pizza just did nothing for me.  Sure, some pizzas whisk me off to an enchanted kingdom where I fight dragons and save the fairest maidens while other pizzas take me over to flint michigan where I work as a one handed rodeo clown. 

This pizza just didn't do anything.  Bite after bite, I only felt a little more full, but not fulfilled emotionally.  I wasn't devastated either.

Just hovering in that purgatory known as "eh" and emphasized with a non aggressive shoulder shrug and not followed with any dance moves.I will give them this.  eh.

5 out of 10 pm dawn greatest hits records

despite all my rage, I am still just a guy in a crate

it just screams "eh"

Dan is like "meh"

Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose.  Trader Joe’s won with the Arugula pizza and the Sicilian Wood-fired one Josh I tried previously.  But this was ehh.  Not a great crust.  The meats were unremarkable.  The peppers had some flavor, but overall, it wasn’t all that great.  Good job, though, on going with nitrate-free snausages and the uncured pepperonis—the only other pizza than Newman to offer such choices!

It reminds me of when I played high school basketball.  In high school during my junior year, I was 6’4” and probably 180 lbs.—so kind of on the lean side of thin.  But, if you’ve played any other sport than wrestling you know what I’m talking about, they listed me at 6’6”, 230 lbs.  It was all done to intimidate the opposition.  Then when I showed up for the opening tip, the other team wanted to know what fast I went on prior to the game and why I was smoking cigarettes.

Because it’s Trader Joe’s, you think the 6’6”, 230 lb power forward is showing up, but no, no that’s not the case.  Pass on this one, fo’ shizzle.

Hugs all around.

4.0 pizzas out of 10

shirts don't lie, and they hide you from being the dirty naked person you are

Tony's

Dan tells it like a pimp

It had to be done.  For months, Josh and I have avoided eating a Tony’s.  I had never had one, but Josh told me he grew up eating them.  At this stage of our lives, you develop a certain impatience with the frozen pizzas.  Either they’re good or not and Tony was a cheap hooker.  I felt like my gut was bitch-slapped during the whole two slices I had.  I’m done with you Tony.  We’re over.

P.S. The photo of the pizza hot out of the oven was not rigged.  It came out bent in the upwards direction. 

2.8 pizzas out of 10

welcome to your colonoscopy

it's waving, and it can't even do that right

 Josh deals some crack

Tony's pizza is a no nonsense bad. There he sits, a big stupid grin on his face

"hey! it's a me!  Tony!  I kind of look like that italian stereo type except I wear a green shirt so you won't confuse me with Mario, and I carry my weight on my body in such a way as to imply that I spend far more time getting drunk and pretending I'm happy then I do actually focusing on my career, which is making pizza!"

Tony makes pizza.  I used to eat this pizza all the time as a wee lad in high school.  It hasn't changed a single bit.  For that I can give the man credit.  Make crap and stick with it.

I will give Tonys this, the slice I had was full of more sauce then a lot of frozen pizzas I've come across.  Other then that there's a few pepporoni's scattered here and there and fortunately for us, there's no "made with real cheese" seal that gets thrown in the way of the picture of the pizza on the front of the box.

Also, Tony's is into the world of product endorsements.  A $15 off six flags deal adorns each box these days.  Somehow, Tony feels that after you eat his pizza, you'll associate it with the thrill of standing in long lines in the heat and then being jerked aronud on a rollercoaster for 2 minutes.... and paying 8 bucks for cotton candy... and watching at least 2 kids puke.  Ah summer.Anyhow, Tony cries out "I'm mediocore, but it's alright!" which is kind of perfect for the state of the country.  He could go far in politics (we should be at the point where we elect cartoons by now, don't you think) but I will turn elsewhere for pizza.

4 out of 10 read my lips, no nude taxes

being the king of gutter balls is like not being a kind at all

Traders Giotto's Arugula Pizza

Joshua takes you on a journey

as soon as I sunk my teeth into the arugula pizza I immediately heard the beach boys classic "kokomo" in my head and I pictured uncle jessie of full house fame carrying me in my arms as he sang "arugula, jamaica, oooh I wanna take you down to kokomo, we'll get there fast ( cause it was a quick meal) and then we'll take it slow.

would I lie to you?

that's where I want to go.  This was easily my favorite of pretty much all the pizzas we've had.  It had no massive ego to carry like newmans own, no tons of uneccesary shouting to the masses advertising with the hope of the consumer overlooking mediocrity like digorno.  It was simply a good pizza, made with good ingredients at a good price.

Sure, we can talk about all the Danny Tanners, and Uncle Joeys and meth head stephanies that can't tell the difference between there fish when they die.  But when it comes to pizza, I'm just going to picture uncle Jessie carrying me away to a world where the beach boys still make music, and before he and aunt becky had those annoying twins with the hopes of boosting ratings as they sunk further into the abyss of the sitcom dredges.


10 out of 10 TGIF line ups, sans the Urkel show, plus Perfect Strangers

is this pizza as good as two people doing it on a rock... I'd like to think so

Dan takes you through airport security

You know when a pizza means business.  You also develop a Spidey sense if you think a pizza’s going to cause a riot in your gut.  Fortunately, this pizza was quite good.  It may even be my favorite pizza ever.  

Imported from Italy, we were treated to four snapshots of the Italians’ pizza making.  I would like to draw your attention to the bottom left photo. 

Were they making the pie at the World Health Organization?  Or are they wearing the surgical masks as an office prank?  Hair nets, I agree with.  But masks? 

I saw micheal jackson do this once.  He's the best.  I hope nothing bad ever befalls him

I think it’s ridiculous when people flying on planes wear surgical masks.  The airport and airplanes are saturated with bacteria, germs and viruses galore.  Why the hell are you flying if you are so worried about catching something?  And why don’t you just wear a full-body suit, throw down Airbourne and call it a day? 

I consider myself a relatively smart guy.  Tell me if this makes any sense:  They say to bake the pizza for 9 to 11 minutes.  “For a crisper crust, bake 1 additional minute.”  Okay, so what if I bake it for 10 minutes [to split the difference with their suggested baking time] and add the additional minute, bringing our total to 11 minutes?  Would that make it crispy?  Off the point, I knew a woman named Crispy.  We shared a pierogi.

You’re getting good value for your peso here, including some cheeses I never had before—grana padano and manchego.

9.9 pizzas out of 10

I will fucking break you

World Table Buffalo-Style Chicken pizza

Dan Talks about Now

We’ve been away and I hope you frozen pizza lovers out there haven’t missed us too badly.  Due to consuming large quantities of frozen pizza, I underwent voluntary small and large intestine replacement surgery.  I got the gut of a poor soul in Vermont—a Mrs. Jane McKinley, who passed away at age 76.  I hope it will get me through these next set of entries.

Doesn’t this “Taste of USA Delicious Discovery” pizza sound like something Woodrow Wilson would serve up at the League of Nations?  That’s assuming they had Wal-Mart around to provide said pie and back when people were kind enough not to wish anyone an evening’s stay in the lavatory.  What I need to do, folks, is stop eating pizzas with buffalo-style sauce on them ‘cause it’s ruining my sanity and objectivity when I write these blogs.  And there’s not enough magazines in the john to keep me from not getting bored.  I’m sorry to vent.  But let me offer props now, publicly for the first time, to Edith Wilson, Woodrow’s beloved, who basically ran the country in 1919 when he couldn’t anymore.  Edith, I’m dedicating this blog entry to you.

 Where was I with this?  Oh yes, this “Taste of USA” got me thinking.  For this World Table series, what are the Chileans doing for their Wal-Mart issue pizza?  Or the Dutch?  Or the aboriginal Australians?  Or people in North Dakota?  And on and on.  Wal-Mart’s either hit a gold mine with so many different choices or they’ve run themselves into the ground with the idea that have buffalo-style sauce somehow replicates marinara and will taste good to people.

One comment before I sign off: they say this pizza has “real mozzarella” cheese.  I’m about ready to throw a temper tantrum with all these iterations of cheese.  Sometimes it’s low-moisture, sometimes there’s no mention of it, sometimes they’re ‘signature’ cheeses, and sometimes they’re real and so on and so forth.  Just a comment…I’m sorry, it’s probably the buffalo sauce setting me off again.

(3.3 pizzas out of 10)

yup, I weigh at least as much as 4 lost souls now... thanks pizza.

you'll find other fine products like this at Walmart too. 

Joshua talks about Apocalypse

The rapture is about to start on May 21^st apparently.  But I looked it up on the internet and it’s just the first phase of the big overhaul that’s going on.  Apparently it really goes down on October 21^st.

What does that mean for you dearest reader?

1. don’t bother putting together Halloween costumes this year
2. maybe get some extra special fireworks for the 4^th of July… for example, you could light your house on fire!
3. if you haven’t made a bucket list, you might want to start, and if you have made a bucket list let’s hope “getting torn apart by demons” was one of the items on there… cause it’s coming.
4. repent I guess…. But you there’s a good chance that there’s someone out there who said they forgave you when they really didn’t… so…. I guess just pour a ton of ice down your pants before 6pm on the 21^st.
5. Since the world is ending soon, can we all agree as a people that “two and a half men” really wasn’t all the great.
6. Since we’re on our last meals, I wouldn’t recommend World Table’s brand of pizza ish food stuff.  So skip it and stick with your favorite foods, like cookies that are baked inside brownies that are stuff into a cheesecake and deep fried.
7. for the love of god, when it all goes down make sure you yell “No Regrets” at the top of your lungs, especially if you’re doing something that really isn’t worthy of the comment, like playing “Super Mario Bros. 2” or reading any of “the twilight” books, or watching “thor”.

2 out of 10 people in our country believe this is happening…. I just made that statistic up, but hey, if some crazy can go around making up and then preaching to people that the world is going to end, I can make up statistics…. It’s my crazy too!

it's my crazy and I'll cry if I want to.

Kashi Mediterranean Pizza

Dans speaks of High-brow logic and pure wholesome society

Straight from the side of the box: Haiku are expressions of complex ideas distilled into simple words.  They serve as metaphors for the richly complex flavors crafted from Kashi’s honest ingredients. 

Their haiku:
Stone-fired pizza

Heavenly whole grain goodness

Earth’s bountiful harvest

Straight from my mouth: Why must everything be so high-brow when it comes to good-for-you pizzas?  Why is everyone trying so hard to have this image of healthiness and purity and wholesomeness?  Why does Kashi throw this haiku on the side of the box, like they’re trying to be cool?  Why don’t you throw down some iambic pentameter and see where you land?  Is throwing a haiku on the side of the box hip enough for being on the west coast where these pizzas are made?  No, I would put a palindrome on the side and get that haiku trash out of there.

My palindrome:
Top a pot

I don’t know what it means and how it applies to pizza, but I think there are some complex ideas being distilled here to reflect my honest thoughts.

(7.4 pizzas out of 10)

I'm casting my vote for Sarah Palindrome, star on no rats!

Joshua just watched the "human centipede" and felt grateful for not being the middle

Kashi makes pizzas that don’t feel like you’ve been punched in the gut.  That is a big deal for me.  There’s nothing like dining on any meal of food only to feel like you’re being pummeled by someone who has been stuck in traffic for 3 hours. 

The flavors were good, they don’t rub it in your face about how great they are (looking at you newman) , and you know…. They named themselves after a Japanese white oak, or a holy city in India.  So there you go.

Maybe the indifferent tone in my voice stems from the fact that I’m a little under the weather, or maybe it’s because Kashi isn’t a pizza company, but they do a decent job… still I know there whole heart isn’t in pizza making.  It can’t possibly be, they have cereal and granola to attend to as well.

But hey… in the world of frozen pizza, sometimes not having your whole heart in it is still far better then the feeling of your whole stomach being obliterated.

7.2 out of 10 holy cities wouldn’t be so holy if they just got the potholes fixed… Wah Wah Waaaaaaaaah

I went to the darkest part of my soul during this review, I call that part "dayton"

Mama Cozzi’s Rising Crust Supreme

Dan "Paul Simon's" it

This pie was a wolf in sheep’s clothing, or what I mean to say, a DiGiornio pizza in Mama Cozzi’s oven.  Topping for topping, indistinguishable sauce to bland crust, I’m convinced this was a DiGiornio Ultimate Toppings pizza.  Convinced. 

I love, absolutely love, the cartoon drawings of the veggies and meats on the upper right corner of the box.  Three things threw me off on this one, though:

1) “No artificial colors or flavors.”  I’ve come to have a healthy respect and appreciation for Red #40.  This is an insult.

2) They repeat the use of “rising crust” three times on the cover.  Okay, I get it.  It rises.  But does it play the trombone?

3) It’s anyone’s guess what the red backdrop is behind “Mama Cozzi’s Pizza Kitchen” in the upper left.  Send your guesses to us.  The most ingenious guess will win the leftover sausage pellets we don’t eat from our next Red Baron pizza.

Oh sorry, but put a damn comma between “If you love pizza” and “you’ll love Mama Cozzi’s”. That cost you 0.2 points.

(2.2 pizzas out of 10)

Imitation is not the highest form of flattery.

they didn't even say "it's not delivery"... and the sauce inside is killing me.... oooooh whooooooooo

Dan's debut record "songs in the key of Pepperoni" is out now!

 Joshua "Art Garfunkel's" it

The good news is.  This pizza, which I picked up at Aldi’s is an exact clone of Digorno in seemingly every way except for it being $4 cheaper and lacking any claim of it being as good as delivery.

The bad news is.  This pizza, which I picked up at Aldi’s is an exact clone of Digorno in seemingly every way.

So what I’m saying is that it’s the lesser of two evils solely because it is cheaper and there was a little part of me that wanted so badly to cheer for the underdog so my palate detected just a smidge more flavor in the crust.  I will note that it could be my imagination running wild.

The question you must ask yourself brave reader is “Would I rather have the better of two evils or no evil at all?”

And when do two or more wrongs make a right?  Look at Australia. Weren’t they supposedly all criminals when they were shipped there?  Now look at them.  Every Australian I’ve ever met has been a top notch person. 

Then there’s America.  We all came over here to practice religion supposedly, but we wiped out a bunch of natives to the land and now we’re all a bunch of whiny self absorbed needy weirdos who still think it’s a milestone that we have our first black president (whoooo, maybe one day we’ll really let women vote).

That doesn’t mean that criminals always turn into great societies that have kangaroos and it doesn’t always mean that people that want to practice their religion in their own way turn out to be completely divided left and right wing extremists who can only agree on a KFC food bowl being a good idea, but it does mean something.  I just don’t know exactly what.

Then there is the fact that I just ate both this Pizza and Reggio’s in one night.  That is definitely two wrongs, but if my body rejects them and I throw them up that will be a right…

Oh yeah, we were talking about the lesser of two evils.  Well, we weren’t actually talking, it was more me babbling and you being a devoted reader.  I appreciate that very much.

Let’s rest your eyes for a bit weary internet explorer.  The Pizza was alright.  It’s easier to deal with alright when it’s priced to move, then when it’s priced to pay for a bunch of stupid commercials (looking at your Digorno).

It’s not the best taste, but not awful and the value is good, so that’s what my score is based on

5 out of 10 wrongs make a left

after eating this pizza I grew a mustache and had a strong desire to tie a woman to the train tracks

Reggio’s Chicago Style Famous “Butter Crust” Pizza

Dan talks about deals

All the fast food chains, in some form or another, claim that a few dollars will get you a lot.  For $3, you could get any of the following food combos:

-A McDonald’s sausage biscuit, a small premium roast coffee, and some hash browns

-A Wendy’s double stack, value fries and a Frostee

-3 BK single stackers

You get the drift.  Or you could buy yourself a round butter crust taste of ass.  That’s what we got for our $3 Reggio’s Pizza from German-based supermarket chain Aldi’s, evil step-sister to Trader Joe’s (yes, they’re owned by the same company).

They have no business putting a fresh, round tomato on the cover of this box.  And with whom is their “butter crust” famous?  Is it necessary to put that in quotation marks on the box?  Maybe they should say instead that they have a “diarrhea-inducing crust”.  It’s a dinner size pizza.  For who?  My left big toe? 

0.1 out of 10 pizzas (for inviting my gut’s wrath)

try and clean yourself as much as possible, but that pizza has still tarnished your soul.

Joshua deals with himself

If I were a wealthy man, I would prefer meatballs and spinach on my pizza made with the greatest crust that I haven’t yet found.  However I am not, and that’s why I was at Aldi’s and that’s why we have Reggio’s Butter Crust Pizza.

But let’s back track.  If I was wealthy, I would take a meeting with all the other wealthy people and when the issue of raising the gas prices came up I’d look at them and go

“really?” 

then they’d say “well, let’s raise the cost of education!” 

“why?”

well… cause we need more money.

That’s the thing here people.  That’s the great metaphor for life that is pizza.  I once had a teacher who said “you don’t need the whole pie, just a slice will do”.  Yet for some reason we all think we need the whole pie.  Tell me this.  Do you really enjoy eating a whole pizza by yourself?  Wouldn’t it be more preferable to be surrounded by loved ones sharing the pizza that is life? 

Of course, what I just learned according to wikipedia is that if you make over 10 billion dollars, you DO get to take it with you in the afterlife.

So, thanks wikipedia.

Reggio’s butter crust was a bit much.  The REAL cheese (that every pizza box except Amy’s has been touting) was good and the rest was edible.  I wouldn’t want to live off of these pizzas for any length of time, but I’m glad that I tried it once.  While the crust wasn’t the tops, at least it was an honorable attempt at making something different crust wise.

I promise you dear readers, when all the pizza blog money comes rolling in, we’ll be feasting on pizza’s together.  I also promise you that Reggio’s won’t be one of them.

3 out of 10 hobos that haven’t been murdered by Rick and Larry

when you eat frozen pizza everyday.... everyday is like a holiday.  a horrible horrible never ending holiday.

DiGiornio Cheese Stuffed Crust

Dan Checks Out

I wrote my will today—made Josh my executor.  I asked that when my body’s taken to the funeral home that instead of using formaldehyde to preserve my body for all of time that they use cheese to stuff me with.  Now, if Josh passes on before me, well then, I’m screwed.  Actually, here’s how I envision it going down: our pizza blog wins a Caldecott Medal in February 2017 and kids ‘round the world are reading our blog in the schools.  Entire math lessons center around the quantity of sodium we’ve consumed per pizza and they rewrite the Ohio history textbook to include trailblazers such as ourselves in the Ohio Legends chapter.  And so on and so forth.  Eventually, we’re so famous and influential that…

It’s a Choose Your Own Adventure blog entry.  If you want to put heartthrob sensations Dan and Josh out of the public eye, go to #1.  If you want to join in Dan and Josh's media circus, go to #6.

1) You’re enraged with jealousy.  Dan and Josh have done everything any blog duo could do.  They’re about to embark on a 16-city, guest blog writing tour until your genius brain decides to buy some T.G.I.Friday’s mozzarella sticks and block their car exhaust pipe.  Their car stalls and they decide to start a scrap-booking company.  THE END.

6) Your hopes are sky high.  You’re telling all your friends about your plans to share the spotlight with the next coming of Hanson.  On their three-city, pizza discovery tour, Josh develops a case of Bieber fever.  Without anyone to shoulder the sudden media blitz, Dan collapses under pressure. You’re left with a half a tank of gas and two cities left to go.  THE END.

0 out of 10

it's like a rollercoaster ride!  It's called "the Puke Dragon!"

Joshua Cashes In

I can’t help but think of “Ring of Fire” by Johnny Cash. 

4 out of 10 because I dined, I walked the line (to the restroom)

No matter what happens, you must know that when I die I will yell "No Regrets" at the top of my lungs.

California Pizza Kitchen crispy thin crust Sicilian recipe

FIRST EVER VIDEO COMMENTARY!

Dan talks about Rick and Larry

Written on the back of the box is the following: “Enjoy as is—or get creative and add something extra on top before baking.  We like the fresh touch of halved cherry tomatoes.”

This is completely horseshit if your pizza has no flavor.  Girlfriend, no cherry tomatoes gonna give this pizza flavor.  I like cherry tomatoes and they’re good on salads.  But they don’t belong on a pizza that’s the equivalent of a kale sprig on a Grand Slam platter at Denny’s.  If it were me, I’d rewrite the line “we like the fresh touch of spices and fresh shiitake mushrooms and some crumbled bacon and some avocado slices and cucumber chunks and nitrate-free, dipped-in-celery-juice-concentrate pepperonis, and so on.  However, I’d insist on keeping in their “low-moisture, part skim mozzarella”.  Heaven knows my thighs don’t need any high-moisture cheese.

What’s up with Rick’s over-sized red sweater on the back of the box?  He could house a small family in the sleeves.

3.1 pizzas out of 10

this is Jigsaw... the only way to get out alive is to cut off your tongue so you'll never be able to taste this pizza again.... oh my... that was way to easy.  Maybe there shouldn't have been 6 more SAW's...

Joshua talks about Larry and Rick

Larry and Rick like to take photos together.  They look happy in those photos.  They look like they’re proud of the work they do.  Larry and Rick are jerks.

First time we tried a California Pizza Kitchen Larry and Rick didn’t bother to put their smiling faces on that pizza.  Instead they put “limited edition” and took their smiling faces off to a bar where hopefully they drank out of shame and fear and loss.  My guess is that they just got matching shirts that said “if you bought our limited edition pizza, you’re a sucker!” and then used said matching shirts to cover up and dispose the body of a homeless person they chose to kill for pleasure.

"my favorite part was when that hobo started crying!... hahah, the nerve!  What's he got to live for anyway?!"

Why would I take two perfectly good mens pizza company and attempt to make them look like hobo murderers who can’t stop smiling and taking advantage of people?  Simply because I can’t picture what else they’d be doing since it feels like they churned out a half assed pizza, said “good enough” and picked up their hobo axes for another day at the beach.

We’re all looking for the spark, the fire, the passion in our lives.  It should be in the people we know, the games we play, the clothes we wear, the music we listen to.  It should also be in the pizza we eat.  I just don’t feel the passion in CPK.  They even tell you to add your own toppings to the pizza… that’s like someone building half a house and then telling you to add a roof if you think it’d compliment the hardwood floors in the kitchen.

Less time at the photo shoot boys, more time infusing passion and soul into a product you’re going to put your toothy smiles on.

3.5 out of 10 don’t hate me because I’m beautifuls 

I've gone hollywood, which is way better then going Dollywood.

Palermo’s Primo Thin Garden Pizza

Dan speaks of Batesian Mimicry

Take a glance at the photo on the back of the father and son making an “old-world” style pizza, printed in black and white no less to authenticate that papa and his offspring were cooking pizzas sometime before the mid-50s when Technicolor became all the rage.  The only thing my father and I would be making would be Easy Cheese twists on Triscuit crackers…except my dad wouldn’t be smiling.  There’d be a thick layer of sweat on his brow, running down his cheeks and onto the crackers.  His mouth would be contorted in some unflattering pose, his mind intent on getting the shapes just quite right.  By this point in the photo, I’d be reduced to an out-of-focus head in the background, snacking on some of my mom’s gingersnap cookies.

Half the credit goes to Josh on this one.  I had low expectations when he brought this one to our pizza lovin’ world, but he had the Palermo faith.  I might have been skeptical because the orange box reminded me of Tony’s pizza.  In nature, this is called Batesian mimicry (look it up, kids!), but in this case, it’s reversed.  The other 80% of the credit goes to Papa Palermo.  Let’s drop the smoke and mirrors: this was tasty.  Good toppings with olives, no less.  The crust was really good and measured 1/16 of an inch thick.  (Yes, we got out the tape measure).  And really, hats off for a minimum of ingredients.  There was no xanthan gum, for instance.  And hats off again for a whopping 9 grams of fiber. 

(8.9 pizzas out of 10)

Joshua thinks of Jason Bateman and wonders when the hell that Arrested Development Movie is coming out

So how thin is their thin crust?  It’s so thin that I feel it’s started a whole new genre of comedy, known as “yo crust” jokes.

Yo Crust so thin, Kate Moss is Jealous!

Yo Crust SO thin Karen Carpenter is Jealous! (to soon?)

Yo Crust so thin our education system in the US is a joke!

Yo Crust So thin Wes Anderson wants to cast it instead of Bill Murray in his next movie

Yo Crust so thin it wrote a few new songs for the Britney Spears record!

Yo Crust so thin I could karate chop a dozen of them while still frozen in one swing

Yo Crust so thin that I swear to god if they cancel “sports show” with Norm Macdonald I’m going to drive out to the Comedy Central offices and demand to punch the president in the face

Yo Crust so thin a ghost could eat it.

You see where this is going.  Nowhere.

Not a bad pie, but you know how it goes, and it goes and it goes.  I’m looking for the spectacular, the epic.  They were honest, and the toppings were nicely placed, the crust description was accurate, and the family story on the back of the box was so engrossing I’ve forgotten in completely.  I wouldn’t not run screaming from this pizza if it were offered to me again, but I would not seek it out.  Fair enough?

7 out of 10 I swear “Yo Crust” would do better if it was developed into an MTV series.  Hit me up on my cell tv execs, I’m so generation next it hurts.

oh sure, it's a thin pizza, but is it as thin yet as vast as this black hole I stumbled upon?

Trader Joe’s Organic Woodfired Sicilian-style pizza

Dan drops some mad science from his head

I penned a limerick in honor of my first Trader Joe’s pizza experience:

Pizza like this will make your mouth shout,

Organic and wood-fired are quality beyond a doubt,

Delicious with provolone and pearl mozzarella,

It made me a very happy fella,

It laps up the competition in a frozen rout.

(9.2 pizzas out of 10)

with frozen pizza this good... I'm homeless

Joshua let's the fame get to his head

well, first off Dan and I and our guest contributor Heather made it into a web series called :24. 

http://twentyfourminutes.com/

we're in episode 16, but you should really just check the whole thing out.  A nicely filmed well done parody of a fox show, which is funny cause usually fox shows are parodies in and of themselves (come on.. the guy who once sang "love in an elevator, living it up when I'm going down" as well as "cause I practice on the peach most every night" is trying to tell kids how to be superstars....)

next on the agenda, I want to thank you all for your endless praise on our pizza blog.  Yes, Dan and I want to come to your place and eat the frozen pizza you know we haven't tried yet.  We do we do, it's just there's so many requests and so little time.  Fame is a weird beast.  It swallows you whole and leaves you empty... but in a really large house.  (for example, see Phil Collins.... jesus man, stop being so hard on yourself).

the next thing I want to point out is that no matter how shitty your love life is, or if you don't even have one at all, keep this phrase in mind and then say it to yourself to cheer yourself up every day "At least I'm not with Carl Tanzler"

wanna know what I'm talking about... Hit me with the link Benny!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Von_Cosel

if you haven't heard this story before, prepare for the part of your brain that develops nightmares to start doing a really long and involved happy dance.

and finally, since I know you turn to Dan and I for pizza wisdom here it is.  This pizza was the best pizza I've had since we started this frozen pizza journey. 

I often feel in the world of frozen pizza that it's still a big unknown wasteland.  It's still the wild west and there's no real rules or regulations.  People and companies are just out there throwing random amounts of toppings on crusts they hope will keep well when frozen and just kind of crossing their fingers and hoping for  the best and it shows.

when I come across a pizza like trader joe's that has a crust that is amazing and takes me back to the pizza I used to enjoy back in my college days, and toppings that taste like someone checked to make sure they weren't expired before hand I'm just elated.  Someone took the time to make something with quality.  Keep that in mind kids.  You can mass market crap and the masses will get it, cause they won't know where else to look.  But there are people out there who want quality and when they find it, they will shout it out to the heavens, or at least write about it in a silly blog alongside a webseries plug and the mention of a horrible man who loved a corpse (spoiler alert to the carl story).

Alright, let's give it a score and move on with our wonderful confusing lives!

10 out of 10.

even the barcode is great on this pizza....

I love this pizza so much, I'm going to start a holy war!