You know this from past experience: the crust has a faint cardboard-box taste, the sauce comes off a little flat, and the cheese has that weird sweat.

Toppings may offer a distraction from this flavorless foundation, but only by way of lukewarm meat and limp vegetables (is there any piece of produce sadder than a sliced mushroom weeping atop greasy cheese?).

You could stop ordering delivery pizza, but that seems like an extreme measure. Delivery pizza isn't bad. It's just that it could be way better.

So this is where you come in. The next time you order a pizza for delivery, you're going to take the 15 minutes it takes the busted Kia to reach your house and spend that time preparing a few simple upgrades. This will not be hard. In fact, it will be enjoyable.

Not only will this give you an activity to do besides staring wistfully (but not too conspicuously) out your window for said Kia to arrive, but you will create something you did not have before: a delivery pizza that's actually delicious.

So scurry around your home and collect the following immediately after placing your order. Bonus: It's sort of like a Chopped competition, but only with food you already know and love and also with way less Ted Allen.

Very, very thinly sliced onion

If you've ordered onions on your pizza before, you know sadness.

Those stringy, overcooked strands are sorry excuses for what onions on pizza can be: fresh, tangy, and the perfect contrast to the heft of the cheese.

So don't order your pizza with onions. Cut fresh onions at home and then scatter them atop your pizza just before eating.

And cut them as thin as you can, using an ultra-sharp chef's knife . You want the zing onions bring, without overwhelming the other flavors of the pie.

Green stuff

Basil. Arugula. Oregano. Spinach. Swiss Chard. Baby kale. Watercress. Pea shoots. Whatever green stuff you have in your fridge, your herb garden, or even your freezer, prep it to place atop your pie.

This "salad-ification" of delivery pizza not only freshens up the flavors of the meal, but adds nutrition to what is otherwise usually a gut-bomb of a meal.

Dried herbs work, in a pinch, and that's often only the amount you need.

Fresh hot peppers

Not crushed red pepper flakes. Those things are fine and all, but they only ever lend a quick snap of heat when what delivery pie really needs is a sustained burn.

So slice up some jalapeos, serranos, Thai chilies, cherry bells, fresnos, poblanos, orif you're feeling especially friskyhabaneros or scotch bonnets.

Keep the seeds in if you want the full force of their firepower, or take them out if you want a more controlled blazed.

That's the other benefit to building your own toppings: You can adjust each to your taste to create something that's far from tasteless.