Hello from sunny-but-chilly Florida! I'm visiting my mom Judy, the wizard behind these Oven-Fried Chicken, Chocolate Dump-It Cake, and Sour Cream Cheesecake recipes, which have inspired hundreds of appreciative comments. Growing up, Judy didn't like her four kids in the kitchen messing up her space. I did a lot of table setting and dish washing, but not a lot of cooking. I guess that made me even more curious about cooking, and now here I am with a cooking and home company! Thanks for the therapy session.

On to more pressing topics….

Pizza

It's a long story, which I'll spare you, but it's taken me a year to get a Substack going about a home renovation I'm doing. I'll fill you in on this soon, but in the meantime, I need your help with a pizza-oven decision.

I've lived in apartments for my entire adult life, and I'm soon going to have a backyard. I'd like to get a pizza oven—not one that's built from the ground up, but one that you can buy and install. I've gotten some recommendations—the Forno Piombo Santino, the Fontana Firenze, and the Gozney—and would love to hear yours! Please send them to me at amanda@food52.com. I'm also going to talk to some pizza people and I'll report out the findings … and my decision.

While I'm in a pizza state of mind, here are some of our most popular pizza recipes:

Crispy Cheese Pan Pizza

Jim Lahey's No-Knead Pizza Dough + Margherita Pie

Potato Pizza Bianca

Detroit-Style Pizza

And some of our pizza gear:

If you're making pizza in your oven, you want to crank it up to the highest temperature and pre-heat a cooking surface—we like cast iron or ceramic.
I use a chef's knife for cutting pizza, but I've been told scissors are the hack. These scissors, designed by Dreamfarm specifically for pizza, are great at what they do. (I'm not a gadget person, but Dreamfarm is always winning us over with their smart designs.)

From the random-but-maybe-interesting-to-you bin in my brain

A newsletter that I'm appreciating: Blackbird Spyplane (it's not new; I'm late to the party.) It's about culture, style, and travel. And it occasionally covers home goods, as in this deep-dive (which may be great but I was too thrifty to do a paid subscription and see the full thing). The best part is its founders' (Jonah Weiner and Erin Wylie) writing styles—self-amused, off-kilter, like they're amped up on caffeine and laughing gas. As my husband, who is particular about prose, said, they 'had me at "heinousness and bogosity.'"

My favorite Christmas gift this year: Accidentally Wes Anderson Adventures by Wally and Amanda Koval–a visual page turner of places around the world that look like they belong in a Wes Anderson movie.

Ok, I'm off to wash dishes and set the table–have a great week!