monday morning – my lunch project

I was up early as I had a lot to do in the kitchen. I really wanted to blog, but I wasn’t getting the best internet connection (only 2G and I need 3G to upload pictures), so I wasn’t able to post my blog. I decided to head to the kitchen to start my project.

From the day I arrived, everyone was taking about the pizza that we made on my last visit. Truth be told, it was the creation of the former cook, Moses, but I think everyone thought it was me. So I promised to make pizza on Monday as our cook Damaris was working and I could teach her.

Our pizza starts with a traditional pizza crust – the sauce, a jarred pizza sauce – and the toppings, a variety of vegetables – and I finish the top with some dried oregano and black pepper. Our pizza typically did not have cheese as we didn’t have refrigeration, however with electricity came a refrigerator. And there was some cheddar cheese from Lucy’s farewell  BBQ, so two of the pizzas had cheese on them.

For the toppings – I sautéed the red onion and the green pepper with some herbs, and I then sliced the tomatoes and the zucchini.

I was a little concerned about the dough rising, as the kitchen is cold. But I put the pan with the dough near the stove and it worked like a charm. Once the dough had risen, and I was ready to assemble the pizzas, I enlisted the help of two of our volunteers – Robbie and Morgan. And at the same time Damaris prepped the oven.

The oven uses large charcoal bricks to heat it up – there are not temperature controls, outside of how much charcoal you add. I was a little worried, as I had never used the oven before, but it worked great!

Pizza Oven – fired by charcoal.

I rolled out the first pizza and then showed Robbie and Morgan how to assemble the pizzas – first spread the pizza sauce on the bottom, almost all the way to the edge, then a layer of the sautéed green pepper and red onion mixture, and lastly we alternately placed the sliced tomatoes and zucchini on the pizza. And as I mentioned before – for two of the pizzas, we added sliced cheddar cheese.

Our Vegetable Pizza, ready for the oven!

I also took the opportunity to teach Damaris, how to assemble the pizza as well as how to roll out the pizza. She did a great job, in fact I think she did a better job than I did with rolling out the pizza. I told the team that I plan to leave her the recipe for the pizza dough.

Damaris also made Spaghetti, Sukuma Wiki and much to my surprise she replicated my beef stew. I was pleasantly surprised as when I asked her what she was cooking, she said your beef stew. She did a great job with it, the only missing ingredient was peanut butter as we didn’t have any. I decided that with the curry powder in the beef stew, fresh chopped cilantro would be a great addition. So all in all a productive morning!

As we finished up making lunch, the other Kili climbers arrived. I will write more later when I have time . . .