efficiency follies

I did it. After celebrating christmas eve and the excitement of christmas morning, a full days bake got underway, the wood oven was used to its capacity.

I also was passed out on the couch by 9 pm.

Lesson No.1 of wood oven management: if you've invited guests over, dont expect to socialise much! It's incredibly hard work and i have discovered first hand the reason why the electric and gas oven was invented. Maybe doing it without a breastfeeding 8 month old kid would also help.

So, the guests had a good time but i spent most of mine 'managing' whatever was in the oven and organising what was to come next, despite having spent the previous day preparing. We did pizza (no pics of those as i figured you're all sick to death of them),

trays of vegetables i picked from the garden that morning roasted inolive oil, garlic and dukka,





the wild kid which had marinated overnight with preserved lemon, homemade verjus, olive oil and rosemary,



loaves of sourdough from a poolish made the night before



a nectarine and red currant tart with an almond meal crust and streusel topping,



Russell Jeavons 12 egg, flourless chocolate cake, complete with ash burns




and dried herbs. I would have managed the meringue (they sit in the cooling oven overnight) but i had no whites, which are kind of required for meringue but I'd misread the chocolate cake recipe which didnt call for just 12 egg yolks, but 12 whole eggs. As for toasting what was left over from last years nut crop... the guests, who obligingly shelled walnuts for the occasion, informed me that fresh walnuts were better than toasted and the hazelnuts were so hard no one wanted that job!

I figure 7 outa 9 aint bad. Not bad for a first attempt at managing a live beast such is the wood oven. But being such a perfectionist, a part of me is miffed that i didnt manage it all AND i forgot to bring out the christmas crackers. damn.

My husband thinks im nuts and maybe just a little obsessed and suggests i think about taking life a little more slowly. Hmmmm. SLOW, slow...hang on...SLOW just became fast and frenzied...will have to think about the inherent contradiction. I think i might just heed his advice but sometimes i find it incredibly difficult to not try and do it all. I am also incredibly pleased that we planned the day yesterday as todays weather is projected to hit 41 C (105.8)!

I can see how much more efficient it is to 'specialise'. If i were just doing bread or cake or veges it would have been easier. It was the preparing many different foods and doing it pretty much single handedly (simon was mainly doing host duties and hot coal moving) that killed me.

Next time, no guests.

pizza ovens and fuel efficiencies

When planning to light up a wood fired brick oven, you really start thinking about fuel efficiencies... how much wood you're going to be using and the tangible outputs gained from burning...lighting a pizza oven is not for the faint hearted. Its no wonder firing up an oven leads to parties on a large scale - cooking up 2 pizzas for a weekday family dinner just doesnt make sense when your burning a wheelbarrow load or two of wood to get it hot enough to bake the base and melt the cheese. So when you're looking at a firing, you plan ahead and think B.I.G. Just like old times.

We are 'celebrating' Christmas this monday. The kids hate missing Christmas with us -apparently its not really christmas without my Christmas stockings! (especially when filled with treats from overseas) so we planned to build it up for a week after their return and so tomorrow is 'Christmas Eve' with lunch with family and friends on Monday. Instead of a christmas tree, today i made a huge wreath of stems of laurel and holly from the garden and suspended it from the ceiling and B1 helped decorate with baubles and candles, to be lit for dinner on Christmas eve (that's Simons tradition and I love it, so im not arguing). Its a 'tree' born of necessity; its Bean proof. Its not shaping up to be a 'traditional' Christmas by any means.

So with a firing in mind, i am preparing the baking schedule for the day. It's looking busy but hopefully lots of communal fun and not too stressful. In cooking order:

Pizza
Bread - soudough loaves
Roasted Wild Goat and garden vegetables
Russel Jeavons chocolate cakes*
Nectarine and red currant tarts with almond pastry*
Meringue kisses*
Roasted hazelnuts and walnuts from last years crop
Dried local fruits (cherries and nectarines) and garden herbs

*thank you Veggie Gnome for the luscious eggs and red currants

Im planning and preparing all i can ahead of time, the kids are getting excited, its very sweet to see after their very sad and dissapointing time with their dad , so here's cheers to a very merry christmas!

Home

bless his little cotton socks, the boy travelled the 14 hour flight home without a peep. We even got a few comments from fellow travellers about his impressive flying demeanour (slept 7 hours and laughed the rest). I even managed to watch a few movies 35,000 ft above sea level.

Home...HOME! God, the delight of walking in our front door was bliss and heaven and even the thought of returning to work next week, (eek, thats like so IMMINENT, so imminent that i haven't even thought about the logistics of it ...thats a bit of a clue into my general character..head..sand..) cannot daunt my joy of beng back in my own space. My own space that still has guests staying (just to keep the party going) old friends are back in town with their two girls (ours return on monday - Yippee).

So we swung back into town and swung straight into news years revelling and woke the next day, a tad worse for wear, but pretty chuffed that we'd managed to cross the pacific with a kid AND do new years in a manner that any 21 year old would have been proud of and then welcomed another 15 friends over at noon on new years day for the long overdue firing of the oven for a serious pizza party.


About 12 pizzas worked their way through the oven and i roasted a few trays of vegetables fresh from the garden. Here's the first pizza; roasted veggies with goat cheese. Yummo. It was perfect weather and a great way to welcome in the new year, although I haven't yet really computed that another year is already underway. My new years resoloutions/missives are about 3 days away yet!

I hope you all had a fun transition into the new year and are fresh for the possibilities of the year ahead.

The Wood Fired Pizza Oven

Yesterday was a busy day. i finished the oven. First up for the day was the vermiculite mortar, it went on first to act as an insulating layer, to maintain the thermal properties of the brick. Its an efficiency measure to maintain maximum heat inside and it hopefully means we wont have to burn so much fuel. Its a bit of an experiment as i havent read about incorporating it into the mortar, its mostly used as an insulating layer inside a box structure built around the dome, but i wanted to maintain the dome shape.

After all the hard work to get the dome just right, i didnt want to be hiding such a hard won, beautiful shape. You can see that i have added a flue and again, im hoping (lots of hope here) that the angle of the flue doesnt inhibit the draw. i know it will to some degree, but how much remains to be seen. Then a finishing mortar and oxide mix was used to render the insulating layer and was slightly buffed. All that remains is to clean the brickwork around the outside of the oven base and the floor inside and of course the first firing. Thats happenning tonight if the rain stops. Im really excited. Now to choose the first pizza to enter...margarita...anchovy...pumpkin...


Overall, Im pretty pleased with the final result and i never, ever want to build one again!

* its like a new baby, i find myself wandering outside periodically just to look at it, give it a bit of a rub on the curve...

do i even like pizza that much?

50 hours later... nearly done... *flat on my back at the oesteopath*
my husband informed me last week that a dome is the hardest structure to build. Well, bloody hell, thanks for telling me NOW! Had a cursing kind of day, the weather was hot and very unforgiving, my mortar was going off , brick halves weren't fitting and needed cutting, cutting wasn't working , kept ending up with shards (damn those inferior seconds!) and finally a brick dropped from the dome and landed on my foot. Im now sporting a large purple egg.

my mum has been coming up twice a week to look after the boy so we can both work, me on Thing 2 and Si on the studio and cleaning up the garden for summer before we leave. she's brought the washing in, bathed the boy, cooked dinner, played and talked and replenished me with tea and lemonade. Its funny, over the last 5 years i have been very short with my mother, finding her ways irritating; so vague, flighty self obsessed and uncertain. Not in a narcissistic way, just a bumbling way but i get angry at her apparent incompetence " what is it your thesis is about again?" but today she cried about her lack of relationship with 'her son', my brother and i really felt for her. he can be so nice to her and at other times so cruel. her tears were a catalyst to my empathic senses and reignited my compassion for her, which of late has been lacking. it's a tough gig being a mum and i resolved to cut her some more slack, drop the expectations and try and accept her for who she is, not who i want her to be. i think some more gratitude and some meaningful friendship might be in order.

what colour the render; ochre, sand or something outrageous?

*addendum* in answer to my own question - yes, definitely! the idea of sliding a two ft lamb, coriander and yoghurt pide pizza, or will it be pumpkin, feta, spinach and red onion, out for the first time is giving me co-nip-shuns!

The Growing Challenge - post #8

this glorious warm spring weather is doing wonders in the garden. time for a Growing Challenge post hosted by Melinda at OneGreenGeneration. Last week i planted up the purple king climber and bush beans. Both have performed incredibly and are up and running. Compared to the beetroot,carrot and parsnip and tomato, which look so wispy and delicate when they poke through the topsoil, these emerging lovelies look so tough and strong as they uncurl from their seed.



The second planting of various heirloom varieties of tomatoes, black zucchinis, pumpkins and cucumbers are finally showing some promise. About a month ago i planted the first sowing out in egg cartons. Never again. unless you are prepared to keep yor eye on them FULL TIME ( ie: no pizza ovens, no kids, no other responsibilities). The reconstituted pulped cardboard acts like a water wick, so it draws the moisture away from the soil rapidly and i was watering, when i remembered, up to 4 times a day. (my husband did warn me) They obviously did not enjoy such a haphazard start to life. So i planted my second run in a plastic seedling tray and after a week and a half they are on the move.



I planted out corn among the middle section of the climbing bean support structure so it can grow up and amongs the beans. Bit of an experiment to maximise space so we shall see how it goes. Corn is apparently a very good plant for determining the quality of the soil and as this is the first year we have used these new beds, i will be interested to see if we applied enough compost, gypsum and lime to this very heavy and acidic clay soil.



The rocket is already starting to go to seed, so a new lot has beeen sown amogst the old until they go to seed and sow themselves. You can see in the pic below, the cabbages in front of the rocket are gaining strength, the bush beans have secondary leaves and the climbing beans are this big after peeking out from the soil only yesterday and the garlic is also shooting.



A rather unusual growing chalenge is Ollie, our rather large 3 legged cat, whois creating havoc in the lower vege garden .i have had to develop a way to prevent him from both digging up the earth to use as kitty litter (noice!) and from lolling in the afternoon sun all over my coriander and chives and totally flattenning it. i have resorted to the feline version of razor wire: vertical sticks pressed in amongst the growth ! it appears to be working a treat.

And just because i can, here's the latest progress shot on the ...yup...the pizza oven, looking like a ruin from pompeii... except for the purple ice cream tub... my mum came over yesterday to look after the boybean so i could put in a solid days work, and after 5 hours of squatting and pressing in the middle of the oven, i have to say , one of my butt cheeks is rather well worked out. The clay chimney pot you can see next to the oven is from my old house. when i had a new roof installed i needed an unused chimney removed and this came down and i kept it, its 100 years old, lovely and i knew it would come in useful one day! if it doesnt end up looking too big for the oven, i will install it as the flue. i love that kind of continuity in lifes path.

rome wasnt built in a day...

...and neither was my pizza oven. Isnt she purdy? Im taking SLOW to a whole new level. the hops vine has gone crazy , growing at least a foot a day (not sure what that is in metric measure??) invitation still stands, party at our place when Wombat pedals through! i love a deadline.

babies , bricks and mortar

babies and mortar dont mix. i knew that , really. i just didnt want to acknowledge it to myself. Dammit, i think this is why women tend to get stuck inside, with all the thankless cleaning and cooking tasks. you can do these things piecemeal in between sleeps and feeding. Well, actually you can build from bricks and mortar piecemeal, you just have to do it in very small quantities, 6 bricks at a time, in the shade. but my god, all that cleaning up to be done, immediately! washing the mortar off the buckets, trowels and tidying the brickwork, else it will all go off and set and then you're in the shit with lumps of it everywhere you dont want it. But im hanging in there, 6 bricks at a time. I'm determined to be able to go 'tah-dah, i made it myself'. Pizza at my place may just be NEXT year.

NB i may have to start numbering any posts about pizza ovens, that way you can avoid them if you want. I may yet end up with a Thing 1 and Thing 2!

NBB Please take note of the fact that the bricks are in fact half bricks. Im very pleased with myself. It was also very satisfying whacking the thingy with the other thingy to split one brick into two.

Pizza on its way

Im finally getting somewhere. A trip to the garden supplies shop this morning saw me return with five bags of paving sand for the foundation of my pizza oven. Must have looked a bit odd with the camera... LOL. Ahh, *the things we do for blogs* After digging out the base which took me a whole day, in between feeding the boy and ferrying dozens of bucket loads of good rich loam into other parts of the garden. The wheelbarrow is a bit tricky for these kinds of jobs as the garden has many steps, so buckets it is. I removed the chardonnay vine which was in the way and never really fruited well and the top layer of edging stones in order to mortar in the bricks and will return them to finish off the base.


The idea of having a whole baking day really appeals to me and opening up the use of the oven to friends who want to bake bread too sounds like a great way to justify some pizzas in between and a glass of wine or two along the way and is about as perfect as a day can get. Thinking that a lot of my posts are about food...

Anyways, due to everyone being outside busy the inside is looking a bit like a heap. But its the weekend so no point cleaning yet, it can definitely wait until Monday.

wood fired pizza oven

The sun came out today. after weeks of cold rain, sometimes snow and cloudy skies, when i went downstairs this morning to start the day the sun was shining and glowing off the floorboards. I am pretty fed up with being cooped up inside most days with the boy so the sun was a great motivator to get outside and do something physical. Time to get started on the wood fired pizza oven. Im really looking forward to the challenge of building it, i havent done very much outdoor 'construction' before, not from brick anyway. Ive built chicken coops, pens and raised garden beds but nothing like this, mortar should be fun. i want it ready by summer when we can start having a social life again. The spot i have picked i think is perfect. Its just outside the kitchen so its easy to use (kitchen is to the right in the pick, you can see the doorless wood 'shed' (hole in the wall) which is just outside the kitchen door and the steps lead up to the garage). The oven will be built where all that growth is.



So i cleared out all the overgrowth and look whats underneath! Crikey!
Its a great height, already has a partly made form for the foundation and will warm this little terraced spot at night and will have shade in the summer days from the grape vine which grows over the pergola.



The view of some of the garden from here is pretty good too, so its functional and has form!



So all i have to do now is find my damn 'build your own pizza oven' book, which i actually suspect i may have accidently 'returned' to the library! Then i can get the specs for the cement pour to make the foundation of the oven. So hopefully by the end of this weekend i should be well on my way. I am sooo good at NOT doing my thesis. Any tips from experienced pizza oven builders out there?

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