Mark’s Special Pizza Recipe

Readers may recall that two weeks ago the Wife went on a short vacation.  I’m happy to report that she had a great time.  Art & Rosa are wonderful hosts, so she ate well and got two nights of uninterrupted sleep.  Things were a little different on the home front.  As I mentioned in a previous post, I had planned ahead and was well-provisioned.

However, after 36 hours of hot dogs (32Q for 40 hot dogs), a change was needed and since everyone loves pizza, I decided to make some.  I thought it would be a good time to add to my other recipes, which consist of spaghetti, peanut butter (48Q for large jar of JIF) and jelly (18Q for locally-made Antigua brand,500g) sandwiches (13Q for 1 loaf of Wonderbread-style sliced white bread) and soup from a can.  Pizza can’t be that hard, right?  I thought I would share the recipe with you:

Mark’s Special Pizza

1. Pour water in a cup and warm it up in the microwave.
2. Add some sugar and yeast, stir with that wire thing.
3. Drink a beer (7Q ea).
4. By this time, the solution is ready for olive oil (2L=86Q); pour some in.
5. Dump a bunch of flour in a bowl (5lb=28Q), and add some salt.
6. Dump the solution into the bowl and stir.
7. Find a kid to stir when it becomes difficult.
8. Dump a bunch of flour on a plate and transfer the sticky stuff from the bowl to the plate.  Get the kid who excels at playing in the mud to play with the sticky stuff and flour combination.
9. Once the sticky stuff isn’t sticky any more, throw it in a bowl with olive oil.  Cover/don’t cover, I don’t think it makes a difference at this altitude.
10. Drink three beers.
11. Remove the stuff from the bowl, divide in two, and spread onto a pizza pan.  Don’t forget to put olive oil on the pan, this makes it easier for the kid to spread it out evenly.  Otherwise it will look like a football when it comes out.
12. Turn the oven on.  It doesn’t matter what temperature, here in Guate the ovens all run at the same temperature, regardless of setting.
13. Drink two beers.
14. Take the bowl of spaghetti sauce leftover from last week (recipe for Mark’s Special Spaghetti is here), and add in tomato paste and oregano.  Spread liberally on the almost-pizza.
15. Get an obsessive kid with too much energy to grate the pseudo-cheddar cheese (1lb=55Q), then combine with a bunch of mozzarella; it should be more white than orange.  Sprinkle on the pizza.
16. Top with liberal doses of quasi-pepperoni from the bodegona (1lb=28Q), then put in the oven.  Adjust the temperature if it makes you feel better.
17. Drink two beers.
18. Check on pizza.
19. Drink one beer.
20. Take pizza out.
21. Take picture.

Not everyone likes pepperoni.