My husband, Clif, is convinced that a true pizza consists of tomato sauce, mozzarella cheese, and a layer of pepperoni so thick that it looks as though the pizza has been tiled. Sausage is an acceptable addition or substitute. He’s also keen about barbecue sauce and chicken pizza. Basically, if the pizza has some kind of sauce and meat, chances are that Clif will like it. Our daughter Shannon’s fiancé, Mike, pretty much feels the same way, as does our good friend Joel Johnson. Male solidarity?

While I can and do eat the sauce and meat extravaganzas that Clif loves, my favorite kind of pizza is quite different. Usually, it doesn’t have any sauce at all. Instead, it has olive oil, maybe some garlic, sliced tomatoes, sliced fresh mozzarella, maybe some feta, sweet red peppers, and calametta olives. No meat. The sad truth is, when it comes to pizza, Clif and I have a mixed marriage.

Twice a month or so, usually on weekends, I make pizza and invite Shannon and Mike to join us. Normally, I make the tiled-pepperoni pizza, but last weekend, I was in the mood for my kind of pizza, and I informed Clif, as gently as possible, that this pizza was going to be more Mediterranean than what we usually have.

Clif’s reaction was admirably stoic, and as I assembled the pizza, he uncomplainingly fetched his camera so that he could take some pictures for this post.

On went the vegetables and cheese. Click went the camera. Olive oil, salt, pepper, and dried oregano followed. The camera clicked some more. Suddenly the clicking stopped, and the room was quiet for a few moments. Clif lowered the camera.

“You mean there isn’t going to be any sauce?” Clif asked, in the manner of someone who has just discovered that he’s been horribly tricked.

“No sauce,” I admitted softly.

Without comment, Clif raised the camera to his face, and the clicking continued, but it now had a half-hearted sound. I knew that for Clif, dinner had lost its usual glow. (Clif loves his dinner the way some men, say, love baseball or football, with a fervor that goes way beyond mere enjoyment.)

Forty-five minutes or so later, the pizza, a glory of vegetables, creamy cheese, and crisp crust, came from the oven. Clif didn’t complain, but instead of his usual two or three slices, he only had a slice and a half.

I sighed, knowing what the next pizza would be like. To paraphrase the writer Don Robbins, “all is compromise here on Narrows Pond Road.” But maybe in three or four months, when the memory of the usurping, sauceless pizza has faded from Clif’s memory, I’ll slip in another one. Or who knows? Maybe I’ll even make two—a Mediterranean one for me and a saucy, pepperoni one for him.