Day 26: Intern dinner and Pizza A la Dave... another foodie friday.

Today was a fine day at work–it was the day some people were saying goodbye and others were saying hello–one of the hardest parts of embassy life is constantly saying goodbye to coworkers. However, other sections were welcoming new people or simply celebrating, and among them was our Pizza chef extraordinaire (and Michael’s boss) Dave. He has a pizza oven, and when it’s reached a hot enough temperature (around 500C) he can average one pizza every three minutes. He hand makes and  stretches the dough and uses amazing ingredients, and it really shows.

In Portugal, it’s typical to add a variety of ingredients to pizza, including an entire egg! or cooked corn! it’s sort of bizarre but I must say, the egg was pretty tasty.

Dave, stretching and preparing the dough:

Perfecting the toppings:

This is the oven in action:

It was SO GOOD, I wish I could say that it wasn’t the best pizza I’ve ever had (because that should be horno pizza) but this was extremely well made and used incredible ingredients too.

Today was friday, so we had another Intern Dinner. This time there were 4 of us, but one of us was Sebastiao, a portuguese local intern. We made tacos with many many fixings: Guacamole, black beans, lettuce and cilantro, sauteed peppers and onions, tomato-y spanish rice, hard shells for the tacos, chicken with taco seasoning (bought at the american store–oh well), and cheese.

It was maybe a tiny bit excessive but we ended up eating mostly everything. It was  nice to eat a more complex meal (with all the different things to prepare) that I didn’t even mind that I definitely burned the rice a bit while I was sauteeing the peppers and onions.

Speaking of a tiny bit excessive–my morning oatmeal has become such a zone for experimentation. Recent editions include Peanut butter hazelnut and coconut, as well as Hot Chocolate Maple, as well as chocolate coconut with chocolate chips. It’s very sweet but it’s so efficient and fast and easy… plus it keeps me mostly full till lunch. Hot chocolate powder has been my new chocolate flavoring of choice since it’s easier to mix in. Pro tips from Lara, the non-Chef.

Anyways, my friends stayed so late and we were really just talking for the most part about life and the US and Venezuela and god knows what else and it was just so nice so the time flew by and here we are.