Our Stay in Temecula…

was to be short. Thursday—Thanksgiving Day—was spent in Sun City with Chuck’s Aunt Margaret and her family. Friday was spent recovering from an orgy of overindulgence in food and beverage. By Saturday we had sufficiently recovered and went looking for lunch.

Which brings us to the Temecula Pizza Company.

“One of the coolest, and oldest, independent pizza joints…. Founded in 1991, they use fresh fruits and vegetables and make nearly everything from scratch…. The pizzeria’s signature pie is called the White Lady which has thinly sliced vine ripened pear, freshly crumbled gorgonzola cheese, pine nuts, mozzarella and provolone cheeses, and a secret white sauce—that one is darn near famous” (blog.pe.com).

Now the White Lady sounded suspiciously like a California-style pie of which I—a pizza traditionalist—am no fan. What is California pizza? “One of the identifying characteristics…is the toppings. California style tends to use exotic toppings and ‘off-the-beaten-path’ combinations.

While it is difficult to determine the origins of this style, some think it started in the 1970's or early 1980's. Back in the 1970's, creative culinary experts like Wolfgang Puck started experimenting with different, non-traditional toppings and later, around the mid-1980's, concepts like California Pizza Kitchen began selling the West Coast style” (pizzamaking.com). Spare me ‘off-the-beaten-path’ combinations.

But one could “design their own” and that is what we did—a basic cheese and Italian sausage with light cheese.

While waiting for the pizza to arrive, we looked around the restaurant that was decorated with posters from vintage western movies. Since I misspent my youth watching B-horror movies, I am totally ignorant about the B-western genre. Sure, I like many of us did watch The Lone Ranger on Saturday mornings. And isn’t it interesting that in every episode the brown-skinned guy (Tonto) was sent into town where he invariably got the *!#% beat out of him. And yes, I was familiar with the name Tom Mix but, to the best of my knowledge, have never seen one of his movies.

But who is Tom Tyler?

According to fandango.com, he “was a champion boxer and weightlifter when he entered films as a stuntman in 1924. Through the auspices of FBO studios (the forerunner of RKO), Tyler rose to stardom as a cowboy hero—and never mind that he despised Westerns and reportedly was terrified of horses!”

The Man from New Mexico was made in 1932 and was “(b)ased on a story in Golden West magazine (and) starred handsome Tom Tyler as Jess Ryder, a detective for the Cattlemen's association who infiltrates a gang of rustlers.

The gang is hired by a nefarious land grabber…to drive the Langton family off their valuable land, and their methods of destruction—injecting the cattle with snake venom—was the only off-beat touch in this otherwise humdrum Western effort” (fandango.com).

Well, now that you know more than you wanted to about Tom Tyler, we move on to Tim McCoy in Two Fisted Law—his “Latest and Greatest Outdoor Romance.” Romance? I thought that the only romance a cowboy had was with his horse.

This movie had John Wayne and Walter Brennan in secondary roles and “Tim McCoy plays a rancher losing his property to a crooked money-lender turned cattle rustler…. The villain is in league with a sheriff's deputy…and together they rob the Wells Fargo. There is a final shootout and the dying deputy confesses to both the Wells Fargo heist and to the fact that Tim's ranch was illegally obtained. John Wayne, who didn't get along with Tim McCoy…swore that he would never again work for Columbia, a promise he kept” (archive.org).

But enough of B-movie nostalgia, our pizza arrived and a pretty good one it was.

The crust was super thin but wasn’t cracker-like as is found in many Midwest thin crust pizza. The sauce carried a touch of heat, was neither too thick nor too sweet, and contained some small chunks of tomato.

And the sausage had a mild fennel flavor, but had been sliced while I prefer chunks. But the pie was a bit dry, and we decided that this is one time that we probably shouldn’t have requested light cheese. But you “live and learn” and we’d rather too little cheese than too much.

Accompanying the pizza was a small bowl of jalapeño peppers in oil and you could spoon the peppers and oil onto the pizza (as I did) or dip the crust edges into the oil (as I also did).

Since I always make use of the shaker of hot pepper flakes that are usually found on you table at a pizza joint, I found the jalapeños in oil to be a really good alternative.

This wasn’t the greatest pizza ever, but did satisfy both our hunger and pizza cravings and merits 3.5 Addies.

To review the role of Adler, Kitty Humbug, and the Addie rating system, read the November 14, 2011 blog.