In one small way, moving house was a collosal disaster - we left our two pizza stones behind. It was the old story of confusion - her ladyship was packing the cupboards in the kitchen and saw a cockroach, so I was asked to pack a cupboard.
Notice that I heard the words "a cupboard", not "all the cupboards". That meant that we moved with what she had packed and what had packed, rather than the entire contents of the kitchen.
How did we survive the dreaded landlord inspection? Simple - the landlord was moving in and wanted to demolish and rebuild the kitchen, so there was no inspection. It was simply get the fuck out of my house before the tradesmen arrive, and even then he sent them in before we had packed and left. So things were a bit rushed and the pizza stones went to a new home. Unfortunately, it was not ours. They were well broken in stones. They were black and crusty and completely uncleanable, but they made a mean pizza.
Ah well, so we had to find two new stones. You'd think that would be pretty easy, wouldn't you?
Ha! Fool you!
I started in K-Mart, because we had a sneaky suspicion that's where we bought them. They were nowhere to be found (along with any staff. It seemed to be a staff-free store). Next came Target, since K-Mart and Target kind of blend together and maybe we got confused and thought we had actually bought them in Target etc etc, but that placed proved to be empty of both staff and stones as well.
Another week, another fruitless search. I made a special trek up to the Essential Ingredient, but their stones were $25 each and I was buggered if I was spending $50 on two stones for the purpose of cooking pizza. So we spent another stoneless week.
It was then back to K-Mart, and this time I found a person who actually worked there! She told me to try - wait for it- the BBQ section. Yes, BBQ section. Tell me if I am wrong, but I don't think that many people cook pizza on their BBQ. You might be lucky enough to have a pizza oven in your backyard, but I think a pizza oven looks a bit different to a Beefmaster BBQ. Still, it was so amazing to talk to an actual human that I took her advice and went and had a look.
No luck.
However, I bumped into her on the way out and she suggested that I try a store called "House", which was just downstairs. By that point, I was in total despair. I figured I would never cook another pizza ever again. I was about to be consigned to a life of fucking Pizza Hut. My God, it was if my life had flashed before my eyes. I just didn't want to walk into another store and walk out disappointed. My search was at an end.
As it turned out, I had to walk past House in order to get to the vegie shop downstairs. Halfway in the door, I almost tripped over a waist high stack of pizza stones that were on sale at $10 each. If I had been pushing a shopping trolley at that point, I would have bought the entire stack. As it was, I only got two. Bliss. And they were cheap.
I felt so good at saving $30 on pizza stones that I went downstairs to the vegie shop and spent $150 on smelly cheese, pate, quince paste, lavosh, dried nuts, fancy olive oil and smoked salmon. And I mean smelly cheese. It was a cold day, but by the time I made it back to the car, the cheese had ripened slightly, and I was pushing a trolley that stunk like a pile of old socks. By the time I got home, the car well and truly stunk.
But at least I had pizza stones.
They finally got fired up tonight. To start with, they were white and virginal. They now have some lovely grease smears on them from spilt cheese, and scratches from the pizza cutter. They have a long way to go before they reach the charcoal colour of the old ones. Being new, the pizza stuck, which is something I am not used to. I need to burn the crap out of them a few times.
The result though was worth it. They were the worst pizzas that I have cooked this year, and they beat the utter crap out of Pizza Hut. Bliss.
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