I have done too much this holiday season and have been rewarded with a full-blown cold. I really want to see a small group of my friends though, so I invite them over for one last holiday get together. As I am sick, I can’t manage anything more than vacuuming my apartment, so I opt for a pizza party.

I’m trying to decide between Piecora’s and Hot Moma’s because Pagliacci won’t deliver to my house, because I’m something like one block outside their delivery area. Grrrr. So I’m whining about the lack of good delivery options when Zach suggests I order from Palermo Pizza.

I call up Palermo and order two medium pizzas, one with pepperoni and olives and the other a “Classico Meat” (pepperoni, Canadian bacon, Italian sausage and salami). They arrive and are greasy and absolutely delicious—especially the one with the sausage. I had just purchased a bunch of furikake rice seasonings and have been dying to try them out, so I set them on the table. I have three flavors: wasabi (horseradish, bonito and wasabi), nori (seaweed) and katsuo (bonito). It turns out that katsuo fumi furikake is fabulous on pizza. It has a great salty and slightly fishy taste (think anchovy) and it has an unexpected and wonderful crunch.

Bob has brought his crazy and delicious chop salad which generally contains whatever he has in his fridge at the moment. This time it happened to be tomatoes, cucumbers, mushrooms, celery, carrots, green onions, pickles and imitation crab meat with a vinaigrette dressing. I took one look at it and thought, hey, I should toss my sea beans in there before they go bad. It was so, so good—the sea beans lending a briny crunch to an already great salad.

I wanted to try out Zach’s octodog as well, so I asked Kait to bring some sausages. She picked up some great bratwurst from Uli’s Sausage in the Market. The octodog came with cute little instructions, but I somehow thought that when it said “hotdog”, it meant anything hotdog-like. Please note that sausages are not meant to be used in the octodog. It mangled our poor little test sausage. Next time we will get bona-fide hotdogs.

Everyone forgot to bring drinks so we scavenged through my fridge and liquor cabinet and invented a new drink: non-alcoholic apple cider with a little amaretto. It was so delicious and comforting that we named it “The Nuzzler”.

For dessert, Zach brought gelato from Gelatiamo. For some reason, I didn’t care for the pistachio flavor, but the crème caramel was heavenly!