Corona Chronicles: Thank goodness of homemade pizzas and braais that work

– Opinion –

Firstly a very happy and blessed Easter to all my Christian friends and family. I do hope the Easter Bunny was good to you (despite the savage stockpiling) and that you weren’t left with only the bunny with the squashed ear or the own brand mellow eggs made with the cheap chocolate to choose from!

It’s amazing how lockdown makes you appreciate the things that you cannot have… Take pizza for example. We are quite used to ordering from our awesome local pizza place on a Friday – no mess, no fuss, just triangles of gooey deliciousness to gobble up. But HP (Husband Person) is also quite adept at making homemade pizza on his large flat pan on the Weber. He even has it marked into segments, as heaven forbid that anyone in our family would want the same toppings! DP (Daughter Person) has been eating a Margherita with Bacon since she was about two. HP has anything that contains smelly anchovies or death-by-chilli: He would rather give up drinking beer than consider a piece of butternut or rocket on his pizza slice!

So in the weekend before lockdown we decided to brush up on our homemade pizza skills. My skill is paramount: It involves very careful shopping for topping ingredients – finding pre-grated mozzarella gets me more excited than when I pour a glass of wine! But I also have the additional skill of needing to return my kitchen to its ‘before-homemade-pizza’ glory as HP manages to get flour from the dough into every conceivable nook and cranny!

This particular Saturday night, everything was ready. HP announced that he was taking the pan out to the Weber and that it was about 15 minutes to supper time. As he put the pan on the Weber, the 23-year-old Weber leg decided it was time to make its departure from this cruel world and slowly broke off, resulting in the pizza pan being upended face down on the grass with the Weber coals on top of it! The family was speechless as they watched the demise of their dinner. In fact, the moment was so tragic that I had to pour myself a stiff glass of red to recover.

Fortunately we have Pizza Perfect on speed dial so no one went to bed hungry, but now we had an additional problem – facing potential lockdown without a Weber. Yes at that point shops were still open to buy things like Webers, but they are also quite costly little blessings and my bank account was glaring at me, so that wasn’t going to work. At 7.30pm, I posted on a few second-hand and neighbourhood groups looking for a second-hand Weber. By 7.33pm and 19 seconds, I had bagged a three-year-old one for five hundred ‘Souf Efrican’ Rand! Not too shabby, Nigel, I tell you!

So the new Weber has been tested at least ‘eleventy’ seventy times during lockdown and has passed the various tests with flying colours – even the homemade pizza one. (Although I had to admit it was a very tense moment and I felt quite stressed so needed to sit in a comfortable seat and revive myself with a glass of crushed grapes – purely medicinal, of course!)

Happy Easter to one and all! May your Weber legs be strong for any outdoor cooking you are planning today!

Missed some of the other Corona Chronicles? Check them out here:

Corona Chronicles: Witty Joburg resident documents past five days of social distancing