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What if leftover Papa John's didn't suck?

A couple weeks ago, I had to go into work on a Saturday to rollout a pretty big project. Princess Nadia came to chill with us while we were up there, and everything went smoothly, so hooray! Also, my boss brought in a few Papa John's pizzas for lunch while we were up there. After we were finished, he told us we needed to take the food with us, so I opted for the pizza.
The next morning, I was hungry, but I'm not a fan of Papa John's when it's fresh, much less when it's been refrigerated overnight. I was presented with a quandary: what the fuck am I supposed to do with this dried out pepperoni pizza and God awful "garlic" "butter" "sauce?"
I started off by scraping the cheese and pepperoni off of the crust. Granted, that was not a smooth process, and I ended up with some bits of bread still stuck to the saucy cheese. At this point, I wasn't totally convinced of what I was going to do, but I knew I wanted to use the different parts of the crust in different ways, so I cut off the thicker exterior section, too.
After going through my pantry, I decided on making some tomato soup. Step one for that was sauteing some minced onion in olive oil while I got to work on the pizza scraps.
I chopped up the exterior crust section, dunked the pieces in olive oil, and seasoned them with black pepper and oregano. These went into a foil-lined casserole dish and stuck into a 350 degree oven to make croutons.
The thin part of the crust had less work done to it: I just used one of my cookie cutters to slice circles out of them. Easy peasy.
Once the onions were getting nice and soft, I added in some halved and salted yellow and red grape tomatoes, then just let those cook for a while, slowly breaking them down before I threw them in the food processor.
Once the tomato mixture was removed from the pot, I dumped in some sliced baby bella mushrooms to cook down a bit. I didn't want them completely cooked; I was wanting them to have a little bit of bite to them.
While the mushrooms got started, I threw the pepperoni, cheese, and a cup of the "butter" sauce into a non-stick pan to melt the cheese, crisp the pepperoni, and hopefully just make it all not taste like shit.
While the cheese melted, I blended the tomatoes and added them back to the pot with the cooked mushroom and just let that all simmer for a little bit.
When it was all said and done, I slipped the circles of crust into the bottom of ramekins, ladled in some tomato soup, then topped it all up with croutons and some of the pepperoni and melted cheese before tossing the ramekins under the broiler for about 90 seconds to crisp it all up on top. A little bit of that French onion soup treatment, you know?
Anyway, this was definitely the best Papa John's I've ever had, leftover or not. I think next time I just won't bring it home, but, in case I end up having to do it, I at least have a plan.
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