For so long while suffering the occasional intense pains cause by my gall bladder disease, I skipped most of the foods that are deadly. Anything that required cheese was just not prepared or eaten here. At restaurants I dined mostly on salads, and I have discovered that although salads are about the easiest food to prepare - most restaurants treat salads like food out of a box. They are awful. For almost two years I discovered their salads were just about carbon copies. What are they teaching in culinary schools?

One of the things I stuck with was avoidance of all fast food joints. If it had a drive-through (with the exception of Taco Bell) I avoided it.

I used to eat "store-bought" pizza. I don't do that anymore, since my divorce I don't have to do it. I avoid pizza like the plague that it is, America's most deadly food item. Ounce for ounce, pizza contains more of the bad stuff than any other food item. It is highest in fat, cholesterol, salt, sugar and grease.

If you eat pizza more than twice a week, you are going to gain weight. If you eat it twice or less, you need to get out more.

So, in the way I am, I developed my own pizza styles over the years. I got a real good pizza pan, 22 inches across, total carbon steel. I tried many types of olive oil, an essential for making pizza. I learned that there is a big difference in cheese that work with pizza, dough and bread, and especially the ingredients that you spread on top. I make and can my own pizza sauce from tomatoes.

Therefore, since I could not dine on the snack due to the GB problem, I eschewed pizza for a year and a half.

Now, I am about to regain my pizza kitchen. I got a thin crust Boboli, found my last remaining jar of pizza sauce, bought some uncut pepperoni (DON'T USE THE SLICED PEPPERONI!!! IT LOSES ITS FLAVOR WHEN IT IS ALREADY SLICED!!!) I can't wait.

Store-bought or delivered pizza is awful. I have tried them all. The closest I ever found to good pizza in a shop was at a small place up in Cleveland. I was the only white guy in the joint. It was exceptional, and I went to the counter to tell the owner. He got teary-eyed. Get this_ He wasn't Italian. He was a 65-year old black man with a limp. I loved it!

Pizza is NOT Italian. It was invented in Brooklyn.

That makes sense, because most of the items you find on the menu in a Chinese restaurant were never cooked in China.They were invented in San Francisco. Of course if you are not from the Bay area, you wouldn't know that.

Take coffee, for instance. Where did the coffee drink come from? Ask most people and the would probably say it originated in a coffee-tree growing country like Ethiopia, Sumatra or India. NOT! The drink we love originated in Vienna, Austria. They still make the best coffee there to this day.

Tea was a Chinese and Indian drink, discovered and exploited by the East India Company which had the rights to everything in England's slave state.

Every country in the world has a national bread, a national drink and a national dish. The USA has a national drink - that originated here. It is Kool-Aid.

Out national bread? I like to think it is sourdough, which originated in the Bay, just like Egg Foo Young. But in actuality it is probably Wonder Bread, which comes close to being defined as "bread," but not quite in my book.

Our national dish:

Pizza.

We love it.

We eat it.

We wear it to our early graves.