Yeah, but with pizza on a bagel, you can eat pizza any time.

I’m missing my Italian lifestyle. Scratch that: I’m missing my American-tourist-in-Italy lifestyle. Pastries and coffee for breakfast, sightseeing, a lunch of pizza a taglio (pizza by the slice), afternoon nap, gelato, sightseeing and shopping, and a late multi-course dinner.

Never mind that we could only eat this way because we were walking miles and miles. Nothing creates an appetite like back-to-back museums, or walking from the Colosseum to Castel Sant’Angelo. Since the most walking I can do here is with my little dog around the block, it seems I’ll have to scale things back a little while stateside.

The CSA thing, and the bounty of produce it brings, has forced some changes. I would not expect my dear husband to eat beets for lunch, or pack kale chips for an afternoon snack, so it makes sense to make a home-run lunch so it can be followed by an unorthodox dinner. Why not pizza for lunch? Reheating might be a challenge at the office, since the only means is a microwave. Maybe we can invest in one of those Domino's HeatWave (R) bags.

For this experiment in changing our eating habits, I made a double batch of my favorite pizza dough to work with on Sunday. After my nap, I divided the huge blob into eight balls, covered with a towel, and got my mise en place ready. There were to be three kinds:

Margherita, a throwback to our Naples pizza. Dunno if it’s D.O.C., but it’s as simple as can be, with a homemade marinara, fresh mozzarella, and basil. Four dough balls met this end.

Ham, swiss, collards, onion, mozzarella, and parmesan. This one for my husband, a fan of greens with any kind of pork. Two pizzas.

Yellow squash, spinach, onion, mozzarella, and parmesan. This one for me, who loves a good gourd. Two pizzas.

Total: Eight pizzas over three hours, including an hour to proof the dough while I got the ingredients ready. Each pizza counts as two servings. I froze half of the pizza in freezer bags, individually portioned, for next week. Is three hours every two weeks a sustainable habit? Let the proof be in the pizza. Looks good, smells good…