Pizza update

Wednesday evenings are becoming a struggle.

Last week the pizzeria was unexpectedly closed with no indication of why. We kept glancing at the site over the next few days and, although the opening times kept shifting around, by Tuesday it was looking like things were back to normal. So I took orders from the boys intending to pick up the pizzas on Wednesday evening while the boys were at karate.

Of course, with the moving opening times, I wanted to be sure so I checked the website while at work (at about 3:30pm) and it told me that they were going to open in half an hour. Things were looking good.

Things were looking better when I reached the station and found that, the first time this week, the train was both on time and not crowded. Things were looking so positive that I almost texted my partner to say everything was wonderful. Almost.

It was a good thing that I didn’t because she called me about five minutes after the train left the station to say that she had just checked the same site and the pizzeria was now closed.

I hadn’t realised just how loud my howl of existential despair could be until someone pulled the emergency brake and the conductor came running to seen who had died. (A slight exaggeration, I admit)

So plan B it was.

I don’t know what is going on. My guess is that they have some sort of staffing problem. It’s a small business with only two people working on any given day — one to take orders and make pizzas and the other to handle deliveries — so if one is off for any reason, they won’t be able to open.

We haven’t given up hope yet. While there are other pizzerias in the area, this one is the best by a long way. And they do a Wednesday discount which makes them very affordable as a regular event. But if this situation continues, plan B is going to end up being plan A.

Happy Dance

I was talking to one of the twins this evening about why our Wednesday night pizzas have been cancelled and, while doing so, I opened up the pizzeria’s website to show him the opening days.

I was stunned to discover that they’ve changed their opening dates again. They are now closed on Tuesdays and Thursdays but, much more importantly, open on Wednesdays.

So I now have the boys orders and, tomorrow, I shall be making my usual trek and will find out if Wednesday night is still cheap pizza night.

We still have a stack of emergency pizzas in the freezer, just in case it all goes pear-shaped but I’m feeling optimistic and will be spending the rest of the evening doing my (potentially incredibly annoying) happy dance 🙂

Disaster!

I think I’ve mentioned before that Wednesday night is pizza night. I come home to an empty house on Wednesday evening because the boys are all at karate, and go straight out to the local pizzeria. By the time I return, freshly cooked pizzas in hand, the boys are changed, hungry and ready for the evening meal.

So, to yesterday and, as I was walking up the main street I was struck by the lack of a welcoming neon glow ahead of me. It wasn’t long before my worst fears were realised: They were closed!

After an emergency phone call to my partner and a quick detour past a supermarket (handily open until 7:30pm) we had a stack of frozen pizzas and the immediate crisis was averted.

It’s not unusual for restaurants locally to take a couple of weeks off during quieter times. I was a little surprised, though, that they didn’t have a notice up to let customers know when they would be back. So I looked up their website when I got home and it was here that the next bombshell fell.

They have changed their opening days.

They are no longer open on Wednesdays.

Not ever.

We are going to have go somewhere else for our Wednesday pizzas.

Pizza and Karate

Wednesday night is karate night. Not for me, but all three of the boys spend an hour improving their martial arts. It’s an interesting sport and one from which (I hope) all three are benefiting. This is certainly the case for the eldest who has already competed in several tournaments and who is in training for his next.

Since I am home before the karate lesson finishes, organising dinner often falls to me, which is handy because Wednesday night is also cheap pizza night — any pizza for €6.50. They’re good pizzas, too.

Over the years, several pizzerias have come and gone locally, but this one has always remained. It’s been through a couple of changes of ownership while we’ve been in Belgium, but the restaurant itself has remained pretty much unchanged — cheap, friendly and reliable. Clearly, a winning formula is not to be messed with.

So here I sit, enjoying a glass of Duvel and finding myself being pleasantly surprised by the WordPress app.

I installed this app some time ago, back when this blog was still self-hosted, and… it wasn’t very good. The app had a rather annoying habit of freezing — generally when I wanted to upload a draft — which led to me removing the app out of frustration.

Now that I have WordPress hosting the blog for, I thought I’d give the app another go. It’s not always as intuitive as I would like but it does seem to be a lot more reliable now and I have been able to successfully use it to follow conversations where possible.

The acid test, of course, will be to see what happens when I press the Publish button.

Pizza in the sun

Some time ago our barbeque finally collapsed. We’d had it for a good many years and, although it was badly rusted in places, we had hoped to keep it going for one more year. I can’t complain, but it would have been a little less panic inducing if the collapse had happened when it hadn’t been full of hot charcoal.

We replaced it, and quite quickly, with another similar one. When we did so, we also treated ourselves to a combined fire-pit, barbeque, and pizza oven.

We have used it as a fire-pit several times already. When stuffed with wood it does a rather good job of keeping the terrace warm as the evening starts to cool.

Yesterday, we had a go at making pizza on it. The result was really rather tasty.