Wood-Fired Pizza Oven Update!

Well, it's officially an oven.

I guess, technically, it's still a pile of unusable earthen material, but it certainly looks like an oven.

After the cob cap had dried, I needed to add the actual fire brick deck of the oven. I cut paper bricks out to help figure out the best arrangement.

It's the world's lamest jigsaw puzzle.

Then, I put down some actual bricks because the paper ones, while less expensive, didn't seem durable enough.

I sifted sand on to the cob cap to level it and give the bricks a solid base.

I used a rubber mallet to even edges and, on occasion, hit my thumb.

And I sifted a LOT of sand. It's even less fun than it sounds like.

Once all the bricks were placed, I drew a rough outline of where the interior of the oven would be.

Because the stone base that I built was not what I could broadly refer to as a perfect circle, I need to make some adjustments. The interior of the oven I had planned wasn't going to work so I cut out a paper circle to use as my new guide.

Naturally, this meant that I had to take off all the bricks and start that process over again.

It's not a big deal, and I want this done right, but it's never fun to have to begin again.

After the bricks were laid down again and everything looked like it might work, I began building the sand form. Remember when you were a kid and you played in a sandbox and it was so much fun?

Somehow, it loses some of its appeal as you age.

It wasn't bad, but piling handful after handful of sand grows somewhat less exciting after an hour or so.

Not big enough yet.

Maybe a little taller?

And a little wider?

Not even close. The dowel has the height of the dome marked on it. 23.25 inches.

How about this? 

The boss did not approve of my design.

The final sand form, ready to get built on.

I tried to do as much research as I could, but I was still learning as I went along. The height of the interior dome needs to be 75% of the diameter of the dome. So, if a pizza train leaves the diameter at one o'clock, traveling at 400 degrees per gallon, how many miles will it take to fill up six buckets of sauce?

Math has never been my strong point, but I think I figured it out.

Now that the dome was built, it was time to get messy.

For this, it's best to have a friend. Fortunately, I do have a friend.

Meet Ben.

Ben is the handsome fellow on the right.

Ben has been my best buddy since we were 10 years old and, as a happy coincidence, Ben is a potter.

As a happier coincidence, Ben was very willing to come spend a day at my house stomping wads of mud and slapping them on a pile of sand.

The sand dome is covered in newspaper, I presume, so you have something to read while you work.

Then, we put two layers over the sand dome. The first is a mix of sand and clay. This layer is thermal mass that will heat up when we build a fire in the oven.

You mix the sand and clay with your feet.

If you have the right music and the right partner, this can become a dance party.

Then you build up that thermal mass over the newspaper covered sand form.

Our first batch wound up being a bit too wet and it was sagging. Ben and I are getting old, so we had sympathy for things that are sagging. We pulled off our first layer and started over.

It was a smart choice.

Ben and the laying on of hands.

Ohhh, look what's in the news today!

Almost done!

We mixed batch after batch of the thermal mass, slowly piling it up around the sand form. Ben did most of the work because I kept stopping to read the paper.

After it was built, we scored the outside with sticks and poked holes with our fingers to give the next layer something to grab on to.

The first layer is then covered with a second layer. This layer acts as insulation to retain the heat. It is sand and clay with the addition of a lot of straw.

More dancing!

Swing your partner, Do-Si-Do!

Spread that straw

And off we go!

There was a LOT of stomping involved in this process.

It's starting to look like an oven!

Not shown in photo: chickens relentlessly stealing and spreading our straw!

We piled on more and more cob, formed the outer doorway and then, as if by magic...

It's an oven!

Can we have pizza now?

And now, we wait.

After a few days of drying, I'll cut the inner layer of the doorway away and scoop out the sand. Then there will be one more thin layer of earthen plaster to cover the oven and it will be pizza time!

Thanks so much to Ben for all his help, guidance, and fancy dance moves.

The Sweatiest Road Trip Ever - Day 2. Skyline Drive in Squanket

In our last thrilling episode, you may recall that we had climbed into a rented minivan that had all the raw driving appeal and responsive handling of a poached egg, and were headed south to deliver our daughter to college in Florida.

That first night we managed to get all the way to southern New York, about 4 hours from home. We decided to crash for the night before we crashed.

In the morning, we got up early and hit the road again. We passed some time deciding on a name for the van. this is an important element of any trip. As the mighty Dodge Caravan was to be our prison for many, many hours, it needed a good name to reflect its importance.

Based on a permutation of a pond name we saw, we decided to call the van Squanket.

Shut up.

Go name your own van.

As you may or may not know, I simply adore tourist traps. The tackier and more awful, the more I genuinely enjoy them.

Here is a partial list of places that my family would not allow me to stop (on the flimsy argument that Tori needed to be at school on time for orientation):

The John Wayne Truck Stop and Chrome Shop
The Lion's Den Adult Superstore
The Food Lion
The Runaway Truck Ramp

One of the many, many "World's Largest Fireworks" stores we saw along the way.

All my sightseeing had to be done along the road, at 70+ miles per hour.

I did get to see:

This

truck

painted

like

Shrek.

The Rust-Oleum Factory

Drooling Tori.

Oddly Contorted Alex

A LOT of super-huge crosses.

People with the worst camp site in the world.

This fine person with the "Democrats Kill Babies",  "Hitler Cuomo Kill Babies", and "Trump Forever" bumper stickers.

I will admit that some of these attractions were less appealing than others, but still, I like the adventure they offer.

We did trust our GPS (named Nellie) to find us a park to have lunch in. We followed her off the highway and pulled into a scenic parking lot at a truck repair facility.

Thanks, Nellie. This is really nice.

After some high-intensity whining, I managed to get the family to allow me to pull off the highway into a tourist information center in Virginia.

I opted for the safety rest area instead of the danger rest area because I am a responsible adult.

Awwwww...

I did discover a triceratops fossil. No big deal or anything, but I think I deserve some sort of award.

It doesn't say anything about removing these items. Thanks for the free gum, Virginia!

Oddly specific directions.

The friendly attendant talked my ear off for about 8 or 9 hours, while I slowly edged away from him. I leapt into Squanket and squealed out of the parking lot and he clung to the hood like some action-movie hero, still trying to convince me to take more pamphlets extolling the virtues of visiting the Factory Outlet Stores next to the Applebee's.

After some tricky evasive driving and three trips though a car wash, we managed to get him off the hood. The only thing that remained was a piece of a map, beckoning us to visit Skyline Drive, a scenic road that winds along virtually parallel to the highway we were on.

"Let's do it!" I cried, reaching out and snatching the scrap of map from under the windshield wiper.

"We drove on Skyline Drive when we came to Virginia before," Kerri reminded me.

"And it was lovely, right?" I said, steering Squanket off the highway toward the beautiful Shenandoah Valley. And it really was lovely. Even the second time through.

Scenic Vista.

Another Scenic Vista.

The 10 millionth Scenic Vista.

The names of some of the overlooks were worth the price of admission.

This, in case you wondered, is what Gooney Manor Overlook looks like. 

And speaking of Gooney.

Tori noticed the buzzards circling overhead and suggested that it might be time to leave.

I made her play dead as a distraction while the rest of us piled in the van.

It really makes you wonder, doesn't it?

Tunnels are always fun.

Wheeeeee!

The road continued to wind and be scenic and lovely, but it was really, really long. Eventually, I asked Tori to look at the pile of literature that the ranger had given us when we entered the park and see how long Skyline Drive is.

"105.5 miles," she answered. "And the speed limit is 35 miles per hour, so..."

I might have lost consciousness for a moment because I didn't hear the rest of her reply.

"105 miles!" I cried.

"105.5," she corrected.

"105.5 miles of this slow, winding road?"

I could feel my family's eyes boring into me. So I closed my mouth and smiled. "Sure is scenic, isn't it?" I asked. "Oooh, look! Scenery!"

A small problem with Skyline Drive is that there are only a few ways off it once you get on it. And they are many, many miles apart. Another, more deeply personal problem was that Alex had developed some sort of intestinal distress and was clouding the air inside Squanket with a toxic haze of egg farts.

Thanks, buddy!

"If you had let me go to the World's Largest Fireworks Store, we could have strapped a bunch of bottle rockets onto the van and blasted back to the highway," I whined.

"If you light a match anywhere within a mile of Alex, we'll all die," Tori choked from the floor, where she had slumped.

We did, eventually, wind our way back to the highway and, all in all, we only lost about 3 precious hours of driving in the race to get Tori to school in time for orientation.

The only way I could see to make up for that lost time would be to stop for pizza.

Alex used his super power of Googling things to find a lovely-looking pizza place that had a wood-fired oven.

The food was delicious. And, boy, did it feel good to sit down after that long drive.

Fortunately, the service was super slow, so dinner only took a couple hours.

At some point during the meal, it was apparently decided that I should be relieved of all driving responsibilities and Kerri was to be the driver from now on.

Which is fine with me. Now I can really do some sight-seeing for the rest of this trip.