It will soon be our turn to host the management dinner party. For some reason this time kids will be present. Theme for the night chosen by the group was Italian. Although stressing about the group coming, I had put some thought into some options for pizza's. With an Italian theme, it should be easy to please kids, some spaghetti bol' and having a dab hand in making their own pizza.
After searching the net, I found that we could hire a pizza oven for $150 for the night. The broader group offered to chip in to share the cost, but I began to think about options for purchasing an oven instead. Of course they range from several hundred to several thousand, but our baseline price was $150.
eBay is an excellent place to shop, so we began to bid on something that looked just right for the occasion, with a dual purpose. Unfortunately we were outbid and the $375 unit was sold for $220. Given I had several weeks up my sleeve, we simply moved onto another one. Just before bidding on the second one, the seller sent an email advising he had multiple units and was happy to let me have one for $150....SOLD to us.
It arrived at Easter, so Maddison and I set about the assembly process. In no time at all we were fairly certain that we had built a pizza oven :-) Now the performance jitters for the dinner party meant that we surely had to have a couple of practice runs.
There was much bemusement and fear from the partner at the thought of my actually using wood and lighting a fire, instead of dashing to the supermarket to pick up some heat beads. Now I am usually pretty good with the concept of fire, and we do have a wood heater. It took no time at all to have a good cooking heat ready to go. Unfortunately when I put the first pizza in I didn't look at the temperature, and 300 was too hot! So we did a small sacrifice to the gods of charcoal on the first one, but it was still edible.
Second one was timed to perfection, and was awesome. For desserts we toasted marshmallows in the coals and dreamt up other options for the oven...damper...potatoes in their jackets...this is going to be great.
Tonight we are having lamb and pumpkin pizzas, and will decrease our cost per pizza from $75!
After searching the net, I found that we could hire a pizza oven for $150 for the night. The broader group offered to chip in to share the cost, but I began to think about options for purchasing an oven instead. Of course they range from several hundred to several thousand, but our baseline price was $150.
eBay is an excellent place to shop, so we began to bid on something that looked just right for the occasion, with a dual purpose. Unfortunately we were outbid and the $375 unit was sold for $220. Given I had several weeks up my sleeve, we simply moved onto another one. Just before bidding on the second one, the seller sent an email advising he had multiple units and was happy to let me have one for $150....SOLD to us.It arrived at Easter, so Maddison and I set about the assembly process. In no time at all we were fairly certain that we had built a pizza oven :-) Now the performance jitters for the dinner party meant that we surely had to have a couple of practice runs.
There was much bemusement and fear from the partner at the thought of my actually using wood and lighting a fire, instead of dashing to the supermarket to pick up some heat beads. Now I am usually pretty good with the concept of fire, and we do have a wood heater. It took no time at all to have a good cooking heat ready to go. Unfortunately when I put the first pizza in I didn't look at the temperature, and 300 was too hot! So we did a small sacrifice to the gods of charcoal on the first one, but it was still edible.
Second one was timed to perfection, and was awesome. For desserts we toasted marshmallows in the coals and dreamt up other options for the oven...damper...potatoes in their jackets...this is going to be great. Tonight we are having lamb and pumpkin pizzas, and will decrease our cost per pizza from $75!
