Baking with the Rizo Family

This weekend I didn’t really have much planned. It was going to be my time to catch up on laundry and work on my garden. I was down to my last clean shirt and I don’t want to tell you when was the last time that I had showered. It was going to be a me weekend and I was going to take a break from letting all the kids come over to my house. Even though I am not busy in the same way I would be in the States I am still exhausted by the end of the week. It is tiring always trying to maintain a certain image in a community where you know you are the center of attention. I guess that is how celebrities feel and it is a lot of work.

One of my goals was to jumpstart my water filter project again. I attended a meeting during the week and I was determined to get a few sold. Well luckily I have been able to sell three more and that will look pretty good when the director comes to visit me this upcoming Thursday. Well on my rounds I met up with Jason’s mom who owns the big pulperia in town. She invited me to come over her mother’s house this weekend to make pizza and cookies. I couldn't pass up the opportunity and I guess laundry would have to take a back seat. What is another week in semi-clean clothes?

Anyways, it was fun working with three generations of the Rizo family. Their daughter Rebecca was back visiting for the weekend from English school and I got to practice with her. She is definitely getting a lot better and even Jason is taking English class now and I can have decent conversations with them both. I need to taking my Spanish studying more serious, I don’t want them showing me up in my own language.

This time around I took more of a managerial position in the kitchen. I was able to regulate the chopping of vegetables to Rebecca and her friend Jamie. I was able to concentrate on making the dough and supervising Santiago making the dough for the cookies.

We made a whole bunch of sugar cookies and were busy eating them as well. Their grandmother was busy cooking carne asada and all the while I was supposed to be managing the heating up of the brick oven. I have never heated up a brick oven with wood before, yet for some reason the mother thought I was a seasoned expert. I don’t think I did too bad, nothing came out burned and we were able to cook all the different trays. We were able to make two pizzas and I admit they were better than my first attempts. I was able to get the dough thin and Jason brought mozzarella cheese from Matagalpa. I may have used too many onions, but it is just a note for next time. The dough still has a different type of taste than most pizzerias, a little doughy, but I will have to do some reading on how to improve that.

And finally what day would be complete without a group shot of all the cooks.