In November, Will Haas, one of our drivers at the Magnolia Delivery Kitchen, approached me about doing a food drive. There were plenty of businesses and organizations holding food drives over the holidays, so Will suggested that we hold one later in the winter when food banks would be running low again.

We picked the Olympics as the time to have our food drive.  While hometown athletes ski, skate and luge into the hero spotlight, this seemed like a great time for us to all be hometown heroes by donating food to local organizations.

From February 12-28, we will be collecting non-perishable food items to benefit Northwest Harvest.  Food can be dropped off at any of our locations or given to one of our delivery drivers upon order delivery.

Northwest Harvest buys white rice and beans in bulk.  They encourage other food donations like:

By Jason Cheung, University Pizzeria General Manager

Pam Parks and Jason Cheung

On January 9^th, Pam Parks, a treasured member of the Pagliacci Family, passed away.  Pam started here at the University Pizzeria on December 1^st, 1981 as part of the University of Washington’s Job training program for people with disabilities, and while she was here she was named the 1992 Washington State Restaurant Association Worker of the Year.

I vividly remember the first time I met Pam. I had just been promoted to General Manager of the University Pizzeria, leaving behind a crew that I had grown to love while training at our Queen Anne Pizzeria. I met Derrick Aiona, my District Manager here at the shop to get the keys to “my” new store, and while he was showing me around, Pam came to the front door and gave the 3 little knocks that she always gave to let me know that she was there. I let her in and Derrick introduced us. Right away I took a liking to her, (how could you not?) and her eternally sunny attitude was a godsend that first year as I adjusted to “being the boss”. She took great delight in reminding me to turn on the ovens after one terrible week when we forgot to turn them on….twice.

It got better when she met my then girlfriend (and now wife), Amber. Every day after that,  Pam would ask how she was doing, and on Wednesday, when the flowers were changed for the coming week she always kept one and asked that I take it home to Amber.  I thought that she was just doing it for me, but I found out at her service that she did the same for Jeff Woodruff, our Director of Operations, who briefly worked here. We had a good laugh about that!

I’ll also always think about how much Pam loved children. She always made a point of going over and saying hi to them when they came in. After she retired I took my son to visit her and she could hardly take her eyes off of him.  She loved seeing him and gave him a bracelet before we left.

Even now, occasionally people will come in and ask about the “little girl” that used to work here. I am sure that they would be shocked to know that she was in her 40’s when I worked with her, as she certainly did not look like it! I’m proud to tell them that I used to work with her and that she had a long, satisfying tenure here.  Without fail, they always comment about how happy she looked and that she had such a great, smiling attitude.

Rest in Peace, Pam. You are missed.

Courtesy of Red Cross.

I, like all of you, have witnessed the news footage from Haiti over the past few weeks.  Total devastation.  You can’t help but be moved by the images in the press.

As I was deliberating what we should do as a company, several of our employees had similar thoughts.  Devesh Kumar, a driver from Miller Delivery Kitchen, was the first to approach me about what Pagliacci could do as a company.  The whole Sand Point Delivery Kitchen crew talked about donating their tips to aid relief efforts.  Jason Cheung, the University Pizzeria General Manager, sent out an email to all of our managers asking if their crew was interested in donating tips for a day and if Pagliacci would match their donations.  Our crew really wanted to help and so did I.

Last Friday we decided that this Thursday, January 28^th, we would donate all of our profits to the Red Cross Haiti Relief Fund.  We are also matching all of our employee contributions.  In addition, we are working with our vendors to get them to donate the food and packaging that we use that day to help support our effort.

A big thanks to our friends out there broadcasting, printing, blogging, posting, tweeting and just simply talking about this event to help spread the word.  And thank you for ordering pizza on Thursday!

We are always supportive of our talented crew in their artistic, athletic and intellectual pursuits, whatever they may be. One of our employees who has worked for the corporate office for over 14 years in accounting has impressed us with her zeal for writing. Erna Mueller won the 2009 Good Read competition by A Woman’s Write with her outstanding entry, How to Find Your Inner Dog.

In the story, stubborn, tough-guy cop Spencer Watley bites the dust only to find himself stuck outside the gates of heaven. Spencer is given a second chance to redeem his callous existence as a human, but this time he’ll have to be a K-9 partner to a young, strong-willed teenager named Justin. Spencer’s job is to help Justin learn to love and trust adults, but it’s not easy. They also have to stand up to the killers and cyber hackers threatening to take advantage of innocent citizens.

In the beginning of this book’s development Erna had indented for it to be a screenplay ― the screenplay won an award from the Hollywood International Film Festival and was also given award recognition from the Hollywood Script Writing Institute. How to Find Your Inner Dog is Erna’s first completed work after ten years of late night writing sessions and many competition submissions. This triumph gets her one step closer to landing a great publishing deal.

Every year we close early on a Sunday or Monday night in December to throw a holiday party for our crew.

For years Sunset Bowl played host to our parties.  Our shenanigans were usually the talk of the bowling alley for the next year – bobbing for smelt in our Survivor competition for Jingle Bell Jungle Boogie Bowl in 2001, Gong Show performances during That ‘70’s Bowl in 2003, Spam carving contest at our Holiday Hula Bowl in 2004 and our Road Warrior Green Machine race in the parking lot for our Holiday Punk Bowl in 2007.  Since Sunset Bowl closed in 2008, we turned to Chop Suey to host our last two holiday parties.

As you can tell from the names of our parties, we always pick a theme and build our party around it (which is captured for the year in the crew photos on each location page of our website – 2009 will be up soon).  This year’s party was Holiday Masquerade.  We sent out kits to our stores for crew to make their own masks.  Many did.  Many made appearances with other means of masking their faces including face paint, gas masks and paper bags.  At the end of the night we crowned Justin Wehrell, GM from Magnolia, our Masquerade King for best mask and Ben McIsaac, cook and driver at Miller, Karaoke King.  Can’t wait for next year’s party!

Every year we challenge our crew to show off their creativity in a pumpkin carving contest. The carving contest doesn’t necessarily mean the pumpkin has to be carved. We receive all types of carved, painted, shaved, decorated and sculpted submissions. One year we even received a living submission. One of our crew was rolled in to our office looking like a scarecrow with pumpkin head only to get up and start walking around when we least expected it. The pumpkin entries span from the cute to the down right creepy and even gross. Every year it’s harder and harder to pick a winner. This year Bellevue Pizzeria edged out 145th Street Delivery Kitchen by 1 point. Here are our most creative pumpkins.

Foraged & Found Edibles was established in 2001 by Jeremy Faber.  Jeremy’s business model was built upon years of being fascinated with both forestry and culinary arts.  After working toward a degree in forestry, he found culinary arts more appealing to his creative interests.  He relocated to Seattle to be closer to the forest and other abundances of nature. While cooking at various Seattle restaurants, foods that he found in the forest began to appear on his menu.  With the large number of edible foods that grow naturally throughout the Pacific Northwest, Jeremy had plenty of wild ingredients to work with. Foraging food soon became a rewarding venture and he turned his passion into a full time business.

Foraged & Found Edibles rounds up an enormous variety of herbs, berries and produce that come from the natural habitat between southern British Columbia all the way down to northern California.  In the spring they sell wild watercress, ginger and a wide breadth of mushrooms and berries.  In the fall they harvest an even larger assortment of mushrooms including the most popular mushroom of the season, chanterelles.  Chanterelles mushrooms are a tasty and colorful addition to pasta, salads, soups and pizza.  Though the winter can be extremely cold, it doesn’t stop Jeremy from collecting some very sought after mushroom varieties including black trumpets and Washington black truffles.

Foraged & Found Edibles sell their bounty to many local restaurants as well as the general public at neighborhood farmers markets.  Enjoy their wild chanterelles on our Chanterelle Prosciutto Pie and Mushroom Primo!

Is it possible for a prosciutto made in Iowa to be better than prosciutto from its native Italy?  Chefs at restaurants across the country from Chez Panisse in Berkeley to Mario Batali’s Otto in New York can attest that La Quercia prosciutto from Iowa is indeed as good if not better than its cousins in Parma, Italy.  And you now can try this prosciutto at Pagliacci.

We have wanted to serve an Italian prosciutto, but hadn’t found the right product for our needs.  We also wanted to be mindful of buying a local, or at least domestic, prosciutto.  La Quercia (say kwair-cha; it means “oak” in Italian and the oak is also Iowa’s state tree) prosciutto, with its nutty creamy taste and silky texture, fits the bill.  The La Quercia prosciuttificio is based in Norwalk, Iowa, where the pigs apparently outnumber the people.  Owners Herb and Kathy Eckhouse lived for several years in Parma, where Herb had been based as an executive with an American seed company.  It was in Parma where the couple developed an appreciation for the prosciutto craft and they wanted know if it was possible to make a high-quality prosciutto in the United States, Iowa in particular.

Herb studied prosciutto making for four years and made some test batches in his garage to see if it was even possible, given that the pig breeds and curing environment were so different from that in Parma, to produce this kind of ham.  They determined it was possible and set about building a state-of-the-art facility.  The Eckhouses are conscious about minimizing their use of non-recyclable or non-biodegradable materials.  They also use pigs that are raised and butchered at farms from within a 200-mile radius of La Quercia.  The pigs are either 100 percent Berkshire or a Berkshire cross and are transformed into prosciutto and other products:  guanciale, speck, lardo, coppa, pancetta.

Pagliacci is proud to be able to bring this prosciutto to our customers.  You can taste it on any of our pizzas that include prosciutto.

For more information about La Quercia, visit www.laquercia.us.

Artisan breads are enjoyed by so many here in the Northwest, just like pizza!  Our wish is for our breadsticks to be just as popular as our pizza, which is why we’ve entrusted local artisan bread makers at Macrina Bakery to craft our breadsticks.  After many tastings and tweaks to the recipe, we finally found a flavor that would altogether complement our pizzas, pastas and salads.

Our new breadstick is very similar to Macrina’s popular Olivetta dough and is crafted with modest ingredients of flour, filtered water, salt, olive oil, parmesan cheese and yeast.  We top the breadsticks ourselves with mozzarella, fontina and parmesan cheeses seasoned with salt and pepper.

Of course the most enjoyable part of artisan-crafted bread is the freshness ― our breadsticks are formed by hand each morning then delivered and baked the same day.  Haven’t tried them yet?  Take advantage of our Frequent Pie-er special this month to get a free pair of breadsticks with a purchase of $10 or more!

Heirloom tomatoes are a unique fruit (yes, tomatoes are a fruit!). Unlike regular tomatoes, they can grow directly from the seed of a previous tomato fruit, hence the name heirloom. Similar to family heirlooms that get passed from generation to generation, so do heirloom tomato seeds. Heirlooms can be difficult to grow for profit because they take longer to bear fruit and have lower yields than regular tomatoes. But what’s important is the end result ― heirloom tomatoes are known for their wild colors, bursting juiciness and folkloric appellations!

It is easy to forget that not all ripe tomatoes are red. In fact, heirloom tomatoes can come in a multitude of colors including red, pink, orange, black, purple, brown, white and green. Some of the names given to these exceptional fruits are truly out-there. With names like Burgess Mammoth Wonder, Green Zebra, Bloody Butcher or Chocolate Stripes, heirlooms make Hothouse and Roma the tomato version of Smith or Jones.

Don’t be fooled by these peculiar names though, each unique tomato has a sweet, earthy and distinct tomato-esque flavor. Try out our latest pizza featuring a variety of diverse heirloom tomatoes. Heirlooms top our Original cheese pizza after baking along with fresh basil and sea salt. The Heirloom Tomato Pie is available through August 4th.

If you really want to see how crazy heirloom tomatoes can get, just head down to your neighborhood farmers market. There has got to be at least one stand with a Burgess Mammoth Wonder pushing twenty ounces!