Despite unemployment being close to 12%, Italians are snubbing traditional jobs like pizza-making.

There are some foods that are so tied to their region, eating them is like a hug from home. Expats seek creative ways to get them shipped or find the closest equivalent in their new city. In the first installment of Hungry for Home, contributor Cara Reedy pines for St. Louis' Provel cheese.

When I moved to New York eleven years ago, I got a lot of blank stares when I told people I was from St. Louis. Some people would say genius things like “Oh right, you have that arch,” or my favorite, “I’ve been in the airport, is there anything in the city?”

People went out of their way to tell me I spoke weirdly. Cab drivers consistently tried to take me on long rides around the city, thinking I was a tourist. I got really homesick after six months.

To cheer myself up I decided to make a St. Louis-style, crisp-crust, square-sliced pizza. I went to my local grocery store to buy supplies. They had everything I needed except the most important ingredient, Provel cheese.

Provel is a little hard to describe. It’s processed, gooey, a little smoky and when heated is takes on the qualities of molten lava. It’s really just delicious and it tastes like home.
FULL POST

Popular U.S. pizza chain Papa John's faces a $250 million class-action lawsuit for blasting customers with illegal text messages.

The plaintiffs allege that Papa John's franchises sent customers a total of 500,000 unwanted messages in early 2010. The spam texts offered deals for pizza, and some customers complained they were getting 15 or 16 texts in a row, even during the middle of the night, according Donald Heyrich, an attorney representing the class.
FULL POST

While you're frying up some eggs and bacon, we're cooking up something else: a way to celebrate today's food holiday.

Dough it up big time! November 12 is National Pizza with Everything Day!

What better way to start a week than by thinking about pizza? And today isn’t just any ordinary pizza day – it’s pizza with EVERYTHING day.
FULL POST

Or just cut out the middleman and craft a pizza at home on the grill

5@5 is a daily, food-related list from chefs, writers, political pundits, musicians, actors, and all manner of opinionated people from around the globe.

Say arrividerci to the meaty monotony of summer grilling (Fire up the grill. Add burgers. Throw on hot dogs. Repeat.) with homemade, flame-kissed pizza.

Here to give you a slice of the action is Jeff Moogk, the Executive Chef at Sammy’s Woodfired Pizza & Grill.

"When grilling your pizza, it is important to remember to have fun and enjoy yourself with the process and the ingredients. Each pizza recipe I included is listed in the order that the ingredients should be placed, leaving the garnish for when the pizza comes off of the grill," Moogk says.
FULL POST

Kate Krader (@kkrader on Twitter) is Food & Wine's restaurant editor. When she tells us where to find our culinary heart's desire, we listen up.

You know the drill. You’re on line at Starbucks, you order a mocha cookie crumble frappuccino from the barista, give him or her your name and wait impatiently for it to be called out so you can grab the last available armchair.
 
Or not - at least if you’re a Brit lining up in a London Starbucks. There, locals resent giving up such classified info, according to a BBC News story titled "Will You Tell Starbucks Your Name?" "I am not looking to make friends when I go into a coffee shop. I just want a drink," the English actor Arthur Smith told the BBC. "I don't want to go clubbing with them."
FULL POST

Domino’s Pizza is delivering some good news to gluten-free eaters, but not everyone with sensitivity to the stuff is happy with the move.

The pie chain announced that it will be offering gluten free crust at all of its nearly 5,000 stores in the US beginning this week, and claims to be the first delivery chain to do that nationwide.

"The prevalence of gluten sensitivity has become a real issue with significant impact on consumer choice, and we want to be a part of the solution,” said J. Patrick Doyle, Domino's Pizza president and CEO. “Now, the whole group can enjoy Domino's with the addition of our new Gluten Free Crust."

But Domino’s has a big caveat in its announcement: the crust is only appropriate for people with “mild gluten sensitivity.” That has some that suffer from Celiac disease scratching their heads and angered that they are left out and potentially put at risk.
FULL POST

However you slice it, this is pretty awesomely cheesy. The Omaha World-Herald served up a clip of GOP presidential hopeful and former Godfather's Pizza CEO Herman Cain crooning a re-vamped version of John Lennon's "Imagine" entitled "Imagine There's No Pizza" at the 1991 Omaha Press Club meeting.

It's not the first or last time Cain delivered a hot slice of his musical stylings. Just last week, Cain crooned the aptly-titled "Impossible Dream" at a rally in Jackson, Tennessee, and in 1996, the associate minister at Antioch Baptist Church North recorded an album of gospel songs.

And here's what Herman Cain looks like as an ice cream sundae.