You mean it's hot and ready right now?

Rebecca had some friends over Saturday afternoon. It was a spur-of-the-moment visit, which meant I didn’t have time to plan what to offer them for dinner. Weekends around here are pretty much fend for yourself affairs during the summer months, which is great for this burned-out cook, but not so great for guests. Rebecca and her friends could probably have whipped up a three course meal had I had any ingredients on hand, but since the only ingredients on hand consisted of ½ a baked chicken, Cheerios, grits and Mexican shredded cheese, Sean and I decided to take them for pizza.

(Did I mention in addition to being a burned out cook I’m also a burned out grocery shopper? I’m trying to see how long I can go without grocery shopping by using everything in my pantry. No one is terribly excited about this, and will be even less so when they find we’re having tuna noodle casserole tonight. Well, Sean will be happy. The kids? Not so much.)

We needed to get the girls home, so we stopped at Little Caesar’s, a pizza chain I do not frequent. It’s not called Little Greasers for nothing. But Sean assured me we could get a pizza quickly, so that’s where we went.

Having never set foot inside Little Caesar’s, I didn’t understand how quickly we’d get the pizza, and I was concerned we were going to be late as we waited on a pizza to be prepared for us. As we placed the order, I asked the cashier how long our order would take. While I was mid-question, she plopped down a box and said, “All set!”

Thus the term, “Hot-n-Ready.”

My pastor, who has a limited palate, loves Hot-n-Readys. When Sean realized I had no idea how the whole Little Caesar concept worked, he said, “Kevin is going to be very disappointed one of his parishioners didn’t know what a Hot-n-Ready was!"

I think he’ll be more disappointed I think they should be called, “Hot-n-Not-Very-Tasty.”