Topic: The Chit-Chat Thread

@ThanosReXXX Oh it's pretty bad. We can't keep a department manager more than 3 months if that.

And yeah, hoping it isn't too serious. Wanna do my usual live reactions for E3.

@HobbitGamer @NEStalgia 100%. Pizza was so good early to mid 90s. And I totally remember that reading program. I used to have read all these hours to get a 6" personal pan. Nowadays, kids read and get tickets to 6 flags. WTH happened?!

@HobbitGamer the food itself really transitioned. I remember back in the day, it was a true Chicago deep dish. A big, heavy pizza served in a pan, thick, soft, oil soaked crust, with a slight garlic infusion and a thick layer of molten cheese. And they had cheese bread to die for.... Thick slices of garlic bread and 3 cheeses on top. It was quality food.

Today they just have Frozen parbaked shells of the thinnest, cheapest cardboard material, throw a little cheese on top and go. It's not even nearly the same product. It went from scratch made restaurant pizza to a glorified frozen pizza to go. The last sit down restaurant closed a decade or more ago here. And the "pan pizza" isn't a deep dish pan pizza anymore.

Heck the restaurants used to serve beer in a pitcher! Far cry from the delivery/pickup fast food joint today.

@NintendoByNature I'd rather have the pizza. Six flags sucks . Nothing like waiting 2 hours in 98 degrees in asphalt to ride one ride, that's probably too painful to enjoy as they push the limits of physics, and remove all the normal rides.

Actually the book it program was probably during the decline. It was better before that era by a lot.

It actually was during Reggies tenure it went into the toilet

@NEStalgia I think you're right I do recall it hitting toilet right when the big foot pizza came out haha

@NintendoByNature

@ThanosReXXX I need to expand a little more into beans. Really the only reason that I've done mostly pinto beans is due to how cheap they are, plus I'm a sucker for the occasional refried bean dish. Thanks for the recipe link, I don't believe I've had capuchin beans but would certainly try them.

I used to make some store-bought stir fry mixes (frozen ingredients and all) but drifted away from those. The veggies were fine, but the sauces, noodle/pasta/etc. ingredients, and to a lesser extent the meat & preservatives kinda raised an eyebrow. XD I'm sure I could pull off a healthier one with a sauce.... It'll just take some research.

I don't generally mind grilled or barbecued meat, I'm truly just bothered by it when it's nuked. I had some excellent smoked barbecue pork for lunch as part of a fundraiser. I get teased now sometimes when I order a medium steak...."So you want it to moo?" XD

@NEStalgia, @HobbitGamer I was a Book-It fiend when it came to Pizza Hut. I participated in the program as my elementary school used it instead of AR. They used to have pretty decent pizza - their buffet in particular was great - but they have went downhill over the past decade or so here. I last had their buffet about a year ago with some of my family, and we weren't too impressed with the food or the place's cleanliness. Some of it is the chain itself, but management changes are to blame too.

I really wish they hadn't taken those streusel/fruit dessert pizzas off their menu back in 2011 or so. Those things were sinfully amazing. I'd only consider their cinnamon sticks worth having at this point.

If I want pizza around here, I much prefer a couple of local joints at this point. The few times I want chain pizza, I prefer Domino's. Marco's went out of business, Papa John's is too greasy, gas station pizza is for mild desperation, and Little Caesar's is for emergency cases only.

Incredible. I was at my niece’s birthday party this evening eating a slice of Pizza Hut pepperoni pizza wondering when exactly they switched from decent, greasy, deep dish to the “grab-n-go” esque stuff their serving these days; and then I find this conversation. I swear, the crust of that pizza was styrofoam. It used to be a golden bread sponge drenched in olive oil and meat drippings.

I also remember those clear plastic pitchers of beer. They looked magnificent. So bubbly. My dad looked like Clint Eastwood crossed with Charles Bronson when he took one down. I also slayed the Book It! program. I was a big reader. My goal was to get the month’s total in the first week. Good times. Fun conversation.

Hears Game of Thrones theme song revving up
@SheldonRandoms:

I can say I have never seen an episode of game of thrones. Not even like, more than just a few minutes of one..

You all should be ashamed of yourselves.

I've never watched Game of Thrones. Or Rick and Morty.

Come to think of it I only watch Doctor Who...

I was invited to a GoT watch party...once. On the condition that I wouldn’t riff on it. That lasted 10 minutes. They should have known better! My personal favorite snap was “So, this is like Robin Hood, only if everyone was Prince John, right?”

Hiya...!
Boa noite!
I was in the way to go back to home with my bicycle from City of Tomorrow Mall after playing Dance Dance Revolution Ace while keep listening to this song.

@Tyranexx You two are seriously starting to sound like poster children for Whole Foods. Hope you make six figures!

I seriously have no idea how you guys find all that time for food. If I did that my day would be come home from work: do food. Eat at 9:00pm. Go to sleep. And nothing else. I'd rather just try to survive solely on Doritos and Dew than that existence. And I love to cook! Just wish I had the time. Technically I always wanted to be a chef when I was a kid....so it's a (or another) hobby on the list. Just...no time And you need a more idle hobby like gaming, music etc to unwind rather than productive hobbies unless you want to twist heads off people randomly during the work day. If I were to cook like that, there would be no gaming (ever!)

On Pizza Hut: Wait, you still have dine-in pizza hut locations with buffets and such?! Wow, I thought they closed that entire part of the company! Most of them vanished here, 20-25 years ago. There was one about an hour and a half away that closed maybe 10 years ago. That's the last one I ever saw. All pizza huts are little 4x6 waiting areas that fit maybe 4 people at once and a kitchen in small shopping strips. Pick-up/delivery only.

I think you still missed out on the true glory days of Pizza Hut. By the time Book-It and buffets started the slide already started. Back in the real glory days, it was a pizza arguably more desirable than quality independent places. It was just that good. You have to go back to the 80's for that. It was just plain awesome in the 80's. By the early to mid 90's the slump already started. It was still a better product than the barely edible prefab frozen garbage they serve now, by far, but it was nothing like the 80's glory days. It's just that the last 10 or 12 years has seen it slide from "a shadow of it's former self" to "barely edible pizza shaped object that may or may not be worse than DiGiorno." Funny thing was I didn't even notice it until it hit bottom. Back in the day....it was amazing. We're talking around they time that Pizza Hut was the only place to play SMB3 - in an arcade cabinet. And actually even that was the tail end of the good era.

@bimmy-lee This guy gets it^^ You nailed the description perfectly! See, you returned just in time for the great Pizza Hut conversation! It's weird, about a week ago, I woke up, and suddenly had the taste and texture in my mind of the old days. I hadn't thought of it in probably 20 years.....somehow there it was, the REAL Pizza Hut in my mind, and I remembered for the first time in ages precisely how different it is now. You nailed it. The soft sponge bred, the drenching of oil in the thick pan (they were actually "pan pizzas" back then rather than "self rising slightly thicker crust than NY style" they serve today. The pitchers. The atmosphere and dim lighting. And do you remember the garlic bread? Texas Toast style slabs, smothered in melted, browned cheese...I can't remember what knid of cheese...and then you could add unlimited Parmesan from the shaker...which I did....

How dismal that in the modern world such a glorious monument to fast food has sunk to re-heated flash-frozen garbage of the lowest possible quality to squeeze out every single last penny of value. It's kind of a metaphor of the US as a whole, or maybe even the whole of Western society as a whole....the slow descent from quality to minimum value at maximum cost for maximum investor return.

You nailed everything @NEStalgia .
(1)Most people can't afford Whole Foods me included.
(2)Pizza Hut pizza/Fast Food used to be so good but now Blah. Heck even Little Caesars used to be good 25+ years ago when it was buy 1 get 1 for which the saying Pizza, Pizza comes from.
(3)These publicly traded company's are screwing us for more profits as they can't find anymore ways to save money for their stock holders without lowering the quality and charging more.

I remember when all this used to be orange groves.

You live in disneyland?

You live in orangeland?

My kids have a Little Golden Book Classics re print of Disney’s Little Man of Disneyland from 1955. It’s a bizarre adverstory about a heroic leprechaun named Patrick Begorrah who lived in those orange groves and, at first, attempted to protect them from development; that is until Mickey, Donald, and Goofy flew him to HQ in a helicopter and cut him in on the plan. Ultimately, he decided to just live in Disneyland, and one night, under cover of darkness, chose his secret home. And that’s where he stays to this day. True story.

@NEStalgia - Oh man, that garlic bread made all non Texas toast variety garlic bread a no go for me. It ruined me. I watched them make it once. They hit it with a squeeze bottle of liquid butter before AND after the oven. By the time they served it, it had reached a point of super saturation, and the butter was just pooling on the serving plate. You nailed it on the crunchy, cheesy crust top too. They went coast to coast with the cheese inside those deep dish pans. So good. I had a whole other love affair at Pizza Hut too. The ranch dressing at the salad bar. I basically made ranch and Bacos soup with a light sprinkle of greens. Follow that with a free personal pan pizza (thanks Reggie), and a plate so full of chocolate pudding it was hard to carry back to the table, and you really had something special.