Posts Tagged ‘pizza’
Rain’s Back
At least we had a week where it didn’t rain on us. Yesterday afternoon, the ground was just starting to show signs of drying out a bit. That’s over now. 
The horses were grazing in a tight cluster under the gloomy sky. I’m pretty sure they had a sense of what was coming our way. The precipitation made a slow approach, prolonging the wait for the inevitable.
I had just the plan for a rainy night. I had volunteered to prepare dinner for George and Anneliese, and I was serving up my specialty. I brought home a pizza.
That meant we could warm up the kitchen by using the oven. But, shhhh… don’t tell Cyndie. I had her favorite pizza delivered to my workplace, half-baked. She wouldn’t want to know she was missing her beloved deep-dish and more episodes of our current tv series addiction, 2007’s “Life” with Damian Lewis, Sarah Shahi, and Adam Arkin.
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We’ll keep that secret just between us.
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Pizza Therapy
Since I don’t drive to the day-job on Fridays, Thursday nights have become my “Friday night.” Even though my work week is only 4 days long, I am no less exhausted by the end of it. Yesterday, despite all that I was struggling to manage at work, Cyndie decided to complicate it in the early afternoon with a request that I be responsible for dinner.
Sigh. Really?
Okay. I called Gina Maria’s.
One of the greatest culinary events for Cyndie and I occurred the day our long-time favorite pizzeria opened a branch within delivery range of my work place. When the guy who stopped by to announce the new location told me they could do half-baked pizzas, my heart swelled.
I had a new dinner solution, and it was Cyndie’s number 1 choice for pizza.
We invited George to join us for Thursday night pizza therapy. He calls it Thursday night Hays therapy. We think of it as “friend therapy.” Most often, our weekly dinners haven’t been pizza. Maybe it should have been “pie therapy.”
Last night, pizza was just right. Cyndie added an incredible salad and decadent “healthy” multi-berry pie for dessert. It was healthy because it had pecans and walnuts and oatmeal, along with the fruit. She even added flax seeds. I figure the healthy amount of brown sugar in the topping was how it earned that moniker.
The dessert pie was great, but the pizza pie was the key to making dinner therapeutic.
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It was pizzatacular and pizzarrific.
It’s therapizza!
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To Antigua
On our third day in Guatemala City we woke up to instructions to pack for a road trip. It immediately reminded me of the old stand up routine of George Carlin’s about “Stuff.” We needed to pack a smaller version of things we brought with us for an overnight in Antigua and then a few days in Santiago Atitlán
Due to limitations of space in the vehicle, our larger luggage would be trucked directly to the beach house where we would eventually arrive. We packed a smaller version of our travel bags. That still turned out to be a lot of stuff, especially compared to the bag Jose packed. He put on shorts and a tank top shirt and told me “This is how you dress for Antigua!” The small duffel bag he carried looked like it didn’t even have anything else in it.
“You told us to pack light!” he said to his parents when they remarked about his almost empty bag.
We dealt with a moderate amount of traffic on the relatively short trip to Antigua, where Marco strategically chose parking in a hotel that wasn’t the one we would be staying at, for reasons of convenience. That decision led to an unlikely coincidence of Cyndie surprisingly coming upon a Minnesota friend and colleague on the sidewalk of the hotel. What are the odds of that?
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We walked and browsed the bustling streets of historic Antigua. It was a superb experience. Cyndie was an excellent shopper, finding many potential items that captured her fancy. We enjoyed a lunch outdoor at an Italian restaurant that served delicious wood-fired pizza. We splurged on tiramisu cake for dessert.
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In trying to navigate the winding narrow streets from our daytime parking spot, to the exclusive Filadelfia hotel at a coffee plantation nearby where we had reservations, we came to a few roads already closed in preparation for Palm Sunday events the following day. Of course, that spectacle happened to be our objective for tomorrow. Having been naively and blissfully oblivious to many of the details of our itinerary, it was at this point that I began to grasp the enormity of what lie ahead for us in Antigua. Seriously, I had totally missed that it was actually going to be Palm Sunday.
I will never be able to adequately convey my full appreciation for the excellent and inspired planning that Marco and Dunia did to give us the absolute BEST experience imaginable while we were with them. There just aren’t enough superlatives to do them justice.
When we arrived at the hotel we were floored by the greatness of everything. It is exquisite. Our rooms provided an amazing view of volcano Agua that is entirely captivating. We dipped in the pool for a swim after dark, soaked in the hot tub, and then went to dinner in the hotel/plantation restaurant.
It was another day that ended with us feeling as though the events were the equivalent of several days worth. Truly a magnificent experience for us.
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Pizza Delivered!
We had pizza delivered to our home last night! We learned from our friendly neighbors, George and Rachel, about more local food options when they invited us to join them for dinner at the El Paso Bar & Grill after we finished baling hay over a week ago. They suggested a Chinese take-out restaurant in Ellsworth, which we’ve already tried, and a pizza place that will actually deliver to our location.
With Cyndie now working long days in Anoka, MN, and my food prep skills under-developed, we’ve been relying on restaurants more lately. Even if I was doing the cooking, I wouldn’t have time, as the outdoor work has been keeping me busy until 7 or 8 every night. That’ll change when the sun starts setting noticeably earlier. Gotta get as much done as possible while the days are long. So for now, our dinners haven’t been making much of a mess in the kitchen.
The pizza was good, although the crust was a little under done. It definitely stayed hot on the drive to our house, but probably came out of the oven a tad too soon. It would have made sense for us to put it in our oven for a short bit to crisp it up, but we couldn’t get it separated from the cardboard box well enough to allow that. At least it was covered with plenty of good cheese. We must be in Wisconsin.
We’ll try them again sometime, choosing a different selection of toppings before we make any rash decisions about the overall quality of their pizza.
The food I have been serving has been to our animals. Here is a shot of Dezirea enjoying her morning feed with Delilah looming close in search of any morsels that she can reach. The way that dog fixates on horse and cat food, and even… our pizza, you’d think we never gave her anything of her own to eat.
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Relative Something 