Pittstown Point, Bahamas

0 nm
Wind: E 15 knots, gusting to 20

Writing is hard. In case anyone didn’t know that already. I did make some significant progress yesterday, but still. Editing and rewriting and trying to figure out what I really want to say is an agonizing and intense process, made harder by the sweat dripping off my chin every fifth minute and my desk chair trying to buck me every third minute. Maybe I should have picked a less personal topic, but I’ve been thinking for a long time about the first article that I wanted to write, and I’ve wanted for a while to do a study of my Christianity. Besides which, I have the most contacts in the Christian world, and I grew up with my faith so it’s the thing I feel most passionately about. Why not write about it? So, basically, I’ve decided to justify my existence in an essay. Not an easy thing to do. Maybe I should have gone with fiction.

I’m having a rather profound amount of writer’s block. Quelle surprise, right? I’ll avoid for a while by blogging. So. My pizza was a hit last night. I’m rapidly perfecting my crust. The secret is using olive oil in the dough, and then using a generous amount of olive oil on top of the crust to block the sauce from being absorbed into the dough while it’s baking. A-ha! You pizza makers at home may be saying. I also use shortening to grease the pan, because I have it, and because it makes the dishes significantly easier to do.

Karl’s always complaining about the difference between my crust and the crust of the pizzerias where he used to work. (Well, not complaining, really, as much as commenting.) He used to be a pizza maker, too, so really he should be the expert. It’s always been a mystery to me how hard it is to get homemade pizza to be as good as restaurant pizza. I suspect it may merely have to do with the vast quantities of grease they use in everything, grease we would tremble at in the home kitchen. The other key is really, really hot ovens. I was trying to cook my pizza at around 400°, but I’ve upped the temperature to 475°, which cooks the pizza in almost 20 minutes. Karl claims the ovens at Minerva’s, where he used to work, were set at 700°, but I have a really hard time believing that. It’s brutal trying to bake anything in the Bahamas, but even though 475° is really hot, it’s better than having to leave the oven on for an hour. I understand why there’s so few pizzerias around here.

Karl also thinks I should build some pop-up banners into my website with “Ghetto Recipes!” and pictures of us stirring bowls of slop with salt-dreaded hair and straw hats on. It would be amusing, . It’s funny to me how our meals do end up being mixtures of the ghetto with supreme foodiness. like our New England-Thai fusion chowders, which are really just ways of making sardines palatable. Or our pizza with year-old unrefrigerated summer sausage and home-canned tomatoes. It was all delicious, though. Maybe I’ll go have a piece right now.