Pizzas and punctures

Another busy week last week, and more gallivanting around the country for me. I went to Cabarete, on the north coast for 3 days for a staff meeting with a group of us who all work for the same British company here. The apartments had a stunning view

And the sun rises were beautiful.

Did lots of work, ate lots of delicious food and came home, picking Chivirico up on the way.
He decided he wanted to make pizza, as there is nowhere to buy it ready made here.
First stage was to make the dough – more on him than in the bowl though.

Then we had to put it somewhere warm to rise, so off it went into the front seat of my jeep. The jeep is only useful for proving pizza dough at the moment as it has another puncture.

As Chivirico told me, it punctured itself. All I can say is that it did a pretty good job of it.

The dough doubled in size which Chvirico found amazing.

Then I explained how to make it big and round and flat by throwing it around. That didn't work at all!

Made the tomato sauce, covered the pizzas with ham,cheese and salami then  into the oven.
We made two, one for us and one for the neighbours. It was delicious.

This is the time of year for flame trees to flower. This one is at the end of the track which leads to our house.

Known as flamboyant, or framboyan here, the real name is Royal Poinciana I think. They are usually red, but for the first time I have seen yellow ones here as well.

Absolutely gorgeous, and we have planted them all around the finca, so it should look stupendous in 20 years time.

And on a final note, Molly C wrote on the last post that she had the same cauliflower issues as me. Leaves for months and no middle. But she said once the white flower began, it grew really quickly. Molly, the same thing is happening here!

Oh and I nearly forgot the best thing that happened this week. I received my first royalties for the book, which are for March this year, the first month it was out. It sold 226 copies, so I am really pleased. I just hope I can keep it up. "What about your saucepans?" is still getting great reviews, up to 60 five star ones now.  For those of you who haven't read it, you can buy it from Amazon.com/.co.uk or .ca and it is available in paperback or kindle version. If you want to check it out first, you can read previews here.