HEARTFELT DONATIONS FOR VALENTINE’S DAY
Hungry pizza lovers helping to raise funds for cardiac care
Like to make your Valentine’s Day extra cheesy? You could always try a heart-shaped pizza.
The lovestruck holiday typically conjures thoughts of chocolate, flowers and handmade cards. But to those who believe the true way to someone’s heart is through the stomach — a heart-shaped pizza might be just the thing.
“We basically stretch the pizzas out to the normal size and then we put down heart-shaped templates, in small, medium and large sizes,” Antonino’s Original Pizza president Joe Ciavavino said. “Then we just take a cutting wheel and we cut around it. It’s actually pretty simple.”
The heart-shaped pizza trend has become wildly popular over the years among a number of local pizza parlours, turning Valentine’s Day into one of the busiest of the year for many pizzerias. People line up and wait hours to bring their heart-shaped treats home for a romantic night in. “It’s become a thing,” Ciavavino said. “To get a heart-shaped pizza from Antonino’s and stay home, who would have thunk it?” With each order, Antonino’s donates $1 to Windsor Regional Hospital’s cardiac program.
“We thought the cardiac care and the tie-in with the heart would be a cool thing to do,” Ciavavino said. If a pizza isn’t on the table for you this Valentine’s Day, you can still show your support to the cardiac program.
“We also sell paper hearts for a dollar that people put their names on, and we plaster them on the windows,” he said. “We’ve raised quite a bit of money over the years.” Between the paper hearts, pizzas and Valentine’s desserts offered, around $3,000 was raised last year. “We’re hoping this year will be bigger and better,” Ciavavino said. How exactly February became the month of chocolate, romance and heart-shaped pizzas is still a bit of a mystery. According to one legend, Saint Valentine was a priest who served during the third century in Rome. Ruthless emperor Claudius II decided single men made better soldiers than those married with families so he outlawed marriage for young men. Saint Valentine continued to perform marriages for young lovers anyway, and as a result of his defiance was put to death, likely some time in February. There are countless stories and folklore surrounding the holiday, making it difficult to determine how exactly chocolate, flowers and heart-shaped foods became the gold standard for showing your loved ones how much you care every Feb. 14.
But whatever the tale, these days it’s always a love story.