What to Eat After Facing Your Irrational Fears.

I have one major irrational fear. I fear falling. I am absolutely terrified of being in a situation where I might fall down and therefore am unable to ski or, until this afternoon, ice skate. G really wanted to take ice skating lessons, so she asked me if I would take a short four week course with her in an effort to start doing something winter related. She thinks this may make me bitch less in the winter, and that remains to be seen, but I was terrified of learning to skate, in an outside rink, without any walls to hold on to.

But I went. And while I was actually able to skate far better than anticipated, my instructor said that I still looked like I felt awkward (which I did) and that I needed to relax more in order to advance to the next level. I will keep working on that. But what she also did was make us fall down. Alot. Any time one of us fell during the lesson, she would make us all sit down and then get back up. Which I hated, but it also made me sit on the ice and get back up without having a safety net, and while I willed myself not to fall (and I surprisingly didn't), I also did get better about picking myself up off the ice and moving forward.

What we didn't anticipate was how long we would be at the rink. Whoa. We were there forEVER, and neither of us had had much to eat.

So of course, we decided that after last night's crazy family dinner, we would take our sorry asses off to Pizzeria Libretto, which I have wanted to try for forever. And so we did, and while we ate too many points, it was absolutely delicious!

We did the price fixed dinner because some of the money went to the Haiti relief arm of the Red Cross, and because we were starving. Good choice on our end, but WAY too much food. First, we had an amuse bouche that only tasted like sardines so I am skipping even speaking of it. The next was this gnocchi in a meat ragu that was absolutely beautiful with it's massive depth of flavour and tender gnocchi. It was just a tiny portion, but really packed a meaty flavour.

We then were served our pizzas, Quattro Stagione. STOP THE PRESSES. It was delicious. ANd I did not have my camera, so I can only tell you of the delight. But delight it was. This is the best pizza I have had in Toronto, bar none. The crust is beautiful, chewy and slightly charred tasting, the ingredients top notch and absolutely fresh as can be, the house made salami was perfectly roasted on the pizza and offered a smokey meaty chew to it's quadrant. Really just an absolute perfect pizza.

Here's what the restaurant has to say about itself:

Pizzeria Libretto makes the only certified Vera Pizza Napoletana in Toronto, using the guidelines set out by the Verace Pizza Napoletana Association and as set out by the Italian Government and the European Union. This strong statement is backed by our commitment to specifically selected high quality ingredients, made in a traditional manner with old world equipment. For example, the pizzas are made with San Marzano tomatoes, which come from the foot of Mount Vesuvius in Naples, with Fiore di Latte Mozzarella brought in fresh daily, and dough made from 100% organic stone ground flour. These ingredients are baked quickly in 90 seconds in a 900 degree wood burning oven. Our oven was hand made in Naples by a 3rd generation pizza builder. We could have spent half as much on a prefabricated oven from California, but we had a 5000 lbs oven shipped across the ocean because we believe that part of making a real Neapolitan Pizza is achieving the charred and blistered crust that you can’t get from a prefabricated oven, or even from a new high tech electric oven, and especially not from a gas oven.

Maybe a little too full of itself, but honestly, it was really delicious. Next time, we will share a pizza and maybe a salad. It will be much cheaper and much more Weight Watcher friendly, but the leftovers sitting pretty in the fridge are gonna taste pretty sweet tomorrow!