DEAR Jasminda,

Friends recently invited us to their home for a wood-fired pizza night.

As committed pizza makers, we were excited to show off our skills and arrived with toppings for a spectacular salmon pizza.

After spending time arranging red onion rings, slivers of salmon, bocconcini, arugula, a secret mayonnaise recipe, capers, and a drizzle of cold-pressed Olive Oil, our winning pizza was delivered with pride to the host who somehow managed to fling it off the pizza placing peel and onto the pebble-covered ground (at which point his dog licked it).

He then scooped it up and tried to turn it into some sort of Yorkshire pudding even though it was clearly inedible.

For one terrible moment, before I intervened, he seemed to be leaning towards cooking it regardless and serving it to the assembled guests.

It put a bit of a damper on the evening.

Gregorio F.

Dear Gregorio,

The Yorkshire pudding put a damper on the evening?

You’re good. Are you trying to take my job?

I’ll have you know this position involved a gruelling interview process.

Sort of like a cross between Squid Game and a public service job application.

I suspect, with a name like Gregorio, you are not only committed to food, but a bit fanatical (and quite possibly neurotic).

Your ingredients suggest that you didn’t see this as an evening of friendly banter, but an opportunity for some robust one-upmanship.

Your host felt that too, no doubt, and so what (to the casual observer) looked like a simple misstep was more an act of brinkmanship.

It could have gone either way.

Had you allowed your host to cook the pizza, your acquiescence would have been on full display as the social group silently compared his crisp, minimalistic pepperoni pizza to your hot mess of polychlorinated biphenyls, Bunnings Tuscan path pebbles and dog slobber.

Instead, by removing your exhibit from the equation, the question of your pizza’s relative superiority will always remain. The social group will await the next instalment (perhaps a Turducken evening) with bated (not baited) breath.

Carpe diem, Jasminda.