"American Pie" (Miller)

For this week's post, and as a "shout out" (do people still say that?) to my Creative Nonfiction students at IU Kokomo, I'm going to make the world's laziest, most shopworn blogger-move ever. That's right, I'm going to link to a previously published—though well-worth your time to read and ponder—essay by writer, food historian, and culinary docent Hanna Miller. 

You crazy kids. Of course I'm not referring to Floyd's American Pie, the wickedly-funny raunchfest we've all come to know and love.  

Her piece, entitled "American Pie," chronicles the often hilarious, surprisingly precarious, and always unexpected history of pizza, from the early Romans' honey- and cheese-topped masterpieces to whatever is going on between Peyton Manning and Republican shill John "Papa John" Schnatter. 

"Ultimate meats," indeed. 

Miller has this to say about those who take up the mantle (or crust) of pizza connoisseurship: 

The urge to tell other people about pizza was apparently a universal impulse that seized knowing literati like Ora Dodd—who in 1949 penned a two-page paean for the Atlantic Monthly: "It is piping hot; the brown crust holds a bubbling cheese-and-tomato filling. There is a wonderful savor of fresh bread, melted cheese and herbs. This is a pizza"—and World War II servicemen returning from Italy. Veterans ranging from the lowliest private to Dwight D. Eisenhower talked up pizza.

"American Pie" originally appeared in the April/May 2006 issue of American Heritage. Happy Thursday!