Junk Food Nation, a man in Illinois a few days ago was apparently cooking dinner and headed out to his garden to get some vegetables… and he found some lettuce.  $150,000 worth of lettuce, to be exact. Wowza. It got me thinking: what would YOU do if you found a gigantic bag of money in your yard/garden/possession?

There’s concerns obviously. Like the Illinois man, you have to be worried that it was part of some bank robbery or some other bad deed where the money was unlawfully obtained. Also, you have to be thinking that whoever hid it there would be back – and if missing, would go looking for the money. Possibly with a weapon.  Definitely with a weapon.

Or maybe you could outrun anyone looking for the money, as the new ABC game show Take the Money and Run challenges contestants to do. Hell, if you grabbed that bag and just went to several banks reverse-Andy Dufresne style, depositing lump sums here and there, maybe you could get away with it…$150K is a lotta dough…pay off loans, mortgage, buy a froyo shop.  The possibilities are endless.

So what would YOU do?

Today, it’s time for some meal time junk food: Flippin’ Pizza’s Tomato Basil Garlic White Pizza and Pepperoni Bites!

Flippin’ Pizza isa  New York pizza chain that stresses hand tossed thin crust pies that are 100% natural. This was dinner last night. Like EVERYONE, I consider myself a pizza connoisseur.  Having lived in NYC for a year, I remember enjoying a slice that could be bought at a corner shop every four blocks.  Now, living in DC, I have my go-to pizza places for thin crust and deep dish – and Flippin’ Pizza isn’t one of them. But I had a coupon, so why not give it a shot?

Cool logo, Flippin’ P. True to form, I saw a dude at the pizza shop twirling and whirling a gigantic thin circle of white dough. I guess its standard practice but still very impressive.

FP getting some free pub on this blog.  You’re WELCOME.

I like the sentiment here, but I have never really known pizza ingredients to contain things like high fructose corn syrup…maybe back in the day when places like Domino’s were cranking out gross pies and everything was processed. But even Domino’s has changed its scheme and I feel like most places are using fresh ingredients.  And they are acknowledging that the pie contains sugar and oil (nothing wrong with that), but no ADDED sugar or oil. I certainly hope no one is sugar-ing down my pie before service.

I went for the Tomato Basil Garlic White Pizza instead of a plain gooey pepperoni because (1) I was TRYING to be healthy (right), and (2) pepperoni pizza can taste good even for bad pizza shops, and I wanted something more distinct to evaluate.  As they say, pizzas are like bl…. you know what, I’m gonna keep that one to myself.

The formula for this pie was simple – white garlic sauce as the base on a thin crust, covered in mozzarella cheese, thin sliced tomatoes and sprinkled with more diced garlic and basil.  My first impression was that this pie needed more basil… there was some, but if the pie is named “Tomato Basil Garlic” on its menu, then I expect there to be a basil festival in every bite.

My second thought was that the cheese was slightly overdone…I like those darkened cheese pockets as much as anyone else, but they were dominant on the surface of this pizza.

My first bite was…ok.  The first bite of pizza is always my favorite.  And the second. And the third.  And those bites towards the end with the crust…oooo those are good too.

But this first bite was just ok – the pizza had gone a little cold by the time I got home, and the sauce and cheese had congealed a little…Nothing a little oven action can’t fix!

There we go!  A little dry hot air and this pizza was back in action.  My second bite was better… the garlic sauce flavor came out more, and the cheese pulled and stretched.  Still, the flavor of the pizza was a little lacking…

…plenty of good cheese and garlic flavor, and the bites with tomato provided a good tang, but not enough basil!  The big fear with any white pizza is that you don’t want it to just taste like garlic bread – and Flippin’ Pizza managed to avoid that. But this pizza basically suffered from lack of flavor development – this pie didn’t have enough of that oregano-like basil-like herb taste that I’ve come to expect from my white pizzas.

With no meat and no red sauce, the flavor has to come from somewhere; you can’t rely on the customer to shake red pepper flakes or oregano on it. With more basil and a tiny bit of salt, this pizza might’ve been perfect.  As it stood, it was just…ok.

With my meal, I got a bunch of pepperoni bites, which had no description on the menu but I hazarded to guess were the same pepperoni bites I recalled from NYC – essentially large slices of pepperoni rolled up with mozzarella cheese in biscuit dough, typically served with a red dipping sauce.  And when I opened up the pan – they were!  (But where’s the red sauce??? DAMNIT FLIPPIN’ PIZZA!)

These rolls felt right – soft and fluffy, with a good crisp on the outside roll, and they SMELLED GREAT.  No sogginess at all, and they were piping hot.  I ripped one open to get a better look…

See? Like I said – rolls of dough with pepperoni and cheese inside. One bite and I was in heaven. Now THERE reminded me of NYC.  The doug was soft and crisp, and made a nice crackle sound when i bit into it. The dough was perfectly cooked, so no crumbs of dry bread flew out – everything remained intact.  The pepperoni was spicy and the cheese was slightly salty, giving the whole bite an REALLY powerful flavor. And as I chewed the mix of flavors ended up well balanced.

Maybe next time, Flippin’ Pizza, I’ll try a pepperoni red pie. I’ll come back for the pepperoni bites for sure.

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What would I do with that found money? I dunno – if I found the bag in a random place, like inside a dresser I bought at a garage sale, sure – fair game.  But in my own YARD????  Too close of a connection. Is the bag gonna explode with a dye pack as soon as I open it? Is the scary dude from No Country for Old Men going to hunt me down?  Maybe I’ve seen too many heist movies…

Sincerely, Junk Food Guy