Pizza Bagels Are Delicious

“Mama mia, I’m an ethnic stereotype!”

~Chef Boyardee

(editor’s note:  Yup.  We’re still in the midst of a hostage situation.  Hopefully it will be out of the way by tomorrow . Until then, here is a previously scheduled AFFotd)

While AFFotD staff members have been known for their enjoyment of pizza for its unhealthy joy, but what we try to avoid mentioning is that Pizza actually originated in a foreign land with a foul and unpronounceable name (Italy), so that, despite managing to find a way to combine otherwise healthy items like cheese, bread, and tomatoes in such a way to make massive amounts of grease, it technically is not an “American” food.

But it is if you put it on a damn bagel.

Yes, America is known as a melting pot, which given the fact that the term is used as a metaphor for “people of different races, ethnicities, religious affiliations, and backgrounds” is actually pretty gross and conjures up an image of a bunch of melted together people, which some of our staff members who got nightmares from watching Raiders of the Lost Ark as children don’t particularly appreciate.

“Bring us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe….AGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH”

And being a Melting Pot…or, you know, “mix of people,” one thing we excel at is taking things we like from one culture and mixing it with something else to make it even fucking better, like the man who took rum and invented Coca-Cola to mix it with, or how we mixed a white European with a Mexican-American and made one Jessica Alba.  Which is why, in the early 20^th Century, when Jewish and Italian populations in New York got together, the end result was a delicious, snackable, entirely unhealthy Pizza Bagel.

Which we are here today to salute.

Ohhhh, yes

As previously mentioned, Pizza Bagels started as a sort of culinary meshing of the foods Italians were best known for (pasta wine olive oil pizza) and what Jewish communities were known for (…Gefilte fish?  Uh…Mazto?  Oh, right Bagels), taking two previously high-calorie, low-nutrition foods and merging them together like some sort of henchman for cardio vascular disease.  In a scenario that we can only imagine occurred in some Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups like fashion, and individual of Italian descent was walking with a pizza, while a Jewish gentleman was carrying a dozen bagels.  After stumbling into each other and tasting the accidental creation, it’s safe to assume that they jumped in the air to give each other one of those high fives where they freeze in the air and the camera does a 360 around them.

“Take THAT, Physics!”

Pizza Bagels are often underrated, until there is a plate of them right in front of you.  A plate of Pizza Bagels in front of a group of drunk Americans has a shorter life expectancy than the film career of a second place finisher on a season of Survivor.  The ratio of “boxes of pizza bagels purchased” and “amount of times someone drunkenly microwaves a box of pizza bagels at 1 in the morning” is roughly 1:1.  Every time you eat a pizza bagel, your stomach interprets the calories as vodka and raises your blood alcohol content accordingly.

This guy has had no alcohol today, but he ate, like, two boxes of Pizza Bagels

Pizza Bagels have shrunk, allowing us the opportunity to use pizza as a snack.  If you eat pizza as a midnight snack, you have to tell your body that you’re giving up on it for the evening.  But pizza bagels are small enough that you can trick yourself into thinking they’re healthy.  “Bagels are good for you!” you’ll tell yourself (they’re not)  “and just putting cheese and tomato sauce on it?  Pizza bagels are probably a pretty healthy snack too!” (It’s absolutely not).  It’s the same naivety that tells Americans to purchase light beer, ignoring the fact that a shot of vodka actually has less calories.  But, Americans have no problem telling themselves that pizza bagels are an acceptable snack food for two main reasons.

A:  They’re easy as to make.  Just pop it in the microwave, and leave it in there until the cheese melts.

B:  They’re delicious.  Really, it’s all about that fact.

So next time you see a pizza bagel, the ultimate symbol of American cultural cooperation, eat like, 18 of them.  Because it’s not like it’s fried or anything…yet.