For all its nearly universal appeal, pizza is a matter of rather personal taste, I have found.

For most of my childhood, pizza came one of two ways: sausage and cheese for my mom or laden with all kinds of unbecoming garden-y things (mushrooms, peppers, onions) for my dad.

I literally had no idea there were other options until I went to a slumber party in third or fourth grade and was introduced to pepperoni. Life-changing. Even my mom got on board. (She’s now an extreme meat lover gal.)

I ate a fair amount of pizza in college, when you are traditionally supposed to, but it required a fair bit of effort compared with hopping down a flight of stairs to the snack bar on the first floor of my dorm and scarfing down an order mini tacos. But in college I discovered there were options: thin crust, thick crust, deep dish. California Pizza Kitchen was very trendy in southern California then, and I went. I wasn’t impressed. Apparently I’m a traditionalist. New York style, regular crust, a lot of sauce, please.

Then I worked in newsrooms, and pizza took on a new meaning: busy shifts and late deadlines. Usually this happened on election nights, when reporters and city editors were still hanging around and when the copy desk was too busy for folks to take 20 minutes for meals. It was like locusts, man. Twenty, thirty boxes of various kinds would arrive and five minutes later there might be a couple sad pieces left. (Oddly, this was the only time I ever had anything resembling germophobia. All those different grubby hands hovering over those still attached doughy slices and pulling it all apart grossed me out. I liked “free” food as much as the next person and if I was among the first to show up at the table it was fine, but eventually I decided it was just easier to skip the fray and feed myself. I would bring a microwavable Mama Celeste Pizza for One, which barely qualifies as pizza but was close enough.)

My husband, who also hails from newsrooms, had a different objection. He is a pizza purist, and will only eat (1) cheese pizza and (2) “good” pizza, which pretty much lets out Dominos and Little Caesars and the low-price fare delivered to the masses in our workplaces.

The habit persisted, though. We still make it a point to have pizza for dinner on Election Day.

When my kid was in grade school, we developed a different habit and Friday nights were traditionally celebrated with pizza and a movie. We ate a LOT of pizza in those years, most of it picked up on the way home from work.

When we moved to Illinois, we encountered what is apparently referred to as “St. Louis pizza,” which is a very thin crust, almost like a saltine, and cut into squares rather than wedges. My son was horrified by this “abomination” and was happy to get back to school in Florida where they “do it right.” My husband and I are still searching for the best offering near us. So far, the one we like most is an hour away. Our too-lazy-to-move fallback is to order from Casey’s, which has surprisingly good food across the board for a gas station chain.

So for all of you pizza-ing today as part of your home game, where do you order from? What’s your preferred style or topping set?