The big yellow dumpster company would like a word….

The best ones are the ones we make at home. They aren’t all that difficult.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rSZ--5vvtrvWV3Rgm_BXMbE-lOADt9Rp/view

This reminds me that I need to set aside time to make a batch for the nearby family pretty soon. :)

I live in an area where there are three RC parishes within blocks of one another, each with a church and school building (only one of which is in use for one part of a regional RC elementary school). There used to be four parishes, but maybe 15 years ago or so, one that was already combined with a neighboring parish was finally closed and the church sold.

In 2020, a tornado came through and tore half of the roof off of one church and damaged the structure of one of the steeples. The church and (unused) school were the smallest of the three. I am a member of the parish, and have been since we moved here when I was a kid. I have a lot of memories there (most good; serving with a weird priest who we later found out was into young boys, not so much). I haven’t been able to figure out why we were keeping all of these churches and buildings. Well, tornado causes a massive amount of damage, ok, this will be the thing to push the diocese to do something.

They did something alright. They decided to spend millions of dollars to restore and repair the damage. You know, so the local parishioners can continue to be saddled with maintaining three large physical plants that all have large utility bills and maintenance needs. And then we get pestered every month or so with notices saying, “Look what we did for you! Now you need to donate more money to us because we lost members and things are expensive! And we need to maintain these buildings!”

Imagine what a couple of million dollars could have done for local folks in need? Imagine how much better the available income could support the physical buildings if there were fewer buildings?

After this massive waste of resources, I can’t help but see even more clearly that we’ve lost our way. We care more about buildings and things and prestige than we do about people. I know that has been an ongoing theme among church leadership for a long time, but when it makes it all the way down to the local parishes, it is really pretty sad.

Oh I could totally go for a wedding with a donut wall! That sounds awesome.

A little non traditional, but we had pies for our wedding. We had the luxury of ordering them ahead of time, but I’d imagine you could locate 12-14 pies in various flavors for tomorrow. Or do a split with a few pretty sheet cakes and some pies.

A little earlier in the day, I would have recommended calls to Maziotti Bakery in Lower Burrell and Lynette’s Mad Custom Cakes in New Ken. An early morning call might be too late. Lynette’s might respond on FB if you hit them up there tonight, but might still be too late.

Whatever happens, happy wedding day! Remember your guests are there to see you. If you have to tell them there’s no cake and someone complains, tell ‘em to stop being insufferable and they can go hit up DQ later! :)

Edit: Just realized you are saying NEXT Saturday, not tomorrow. Ha! Call the places above. I’d bet one of them can help!

Username checks out! Sad that place closed up, too. P&M was and is definitely unique. Not my favorite, but every once in a while, I’ll get one for the nostalgia. :)

When I was in high school, my friends introduced me to P&M in Arnold. Definitely a bar at the time. Definitely let us all in and served us lots of pizzas. Haha. They closed a bunch of years ago, then reopened later under new ownership. They still make a P&M style pizza. The “Birdville Pie” at Phillipi’s is supposedly the original P&M recipe. The two are similar, but have some minor profile differences.

A P&M style pizza is definitely unique, and not something I’ve experienced elsewhere. The sauce and cheese are some melty amalgamation, famous for burning the roof of your mouth if consumed straight on delivery to the table. However, one must not let the pizza sit for too long, or it just gets weird. There’s a short window of consumability where the pizza is awesome. It is not a pie that survives to leftovers well. Plan to eat the whole thing. This isn’t hard to do, as the crust is super thin. Ordering in (at either place) is recommended for the best experience. It is acceptable to get it to go for locals, but more than maybe 15 minutes in a car and it will start to fade.