Casa 4 Cena

Last week, Casa 4 (my house) had our first house dinner since orientation. It was a great time! We decided to make a few pizzas, so that evening I hung back with one of my housemates to make the dough while a few others went into town to buy vegetables. I had never made pizza dough before, so I enjoyed learning how to do that and getting my hands dirty. When the shopping crew returned with the veggies, we all got busy chopping and constructing our pizzas. They were the strangest, most exotic pizzas ever! The wide range of toppings included tuna and corn in addition to the ton of things you would normally put on a pizza like pineapple and onion. As an example of my perspective change this year, I would probably have turned my nose up at the pizzas if I was in the United States (I used to be pretty picky), but here I couldn’t wait to taste them. When you eat a lot of rice, beans, and tortillas, you kind of freak out when you have a chance to eat something really fresh with a ton of flavor, as evidenced by my “What else can we add?!” mentality. Throughout the whole experience, I was really touched and impressed by the generosity of everyone.  Cheese is expensive here, but my housemates readily gave up slice after slice. Bags of tomato sauce, cans of corn and tuna, and cups of flour were also flying out of everyone’s cupboards. Before we knew it, we had three masterpieces of pizzas sitting in front of us and we monopolized the oven in each volunteer house so we could cook them all at the same time. While the pizzas were baking, we stayed busy in the house cleaning up and more importantly preparing the table. We set out place settings for everyone and even garnished the table with candles. When I stepped back, I was struck by the effect. I had forgotten how special and powerful it is to share a meal with others in this way! Restaurants are great but nothing beats making food yourself. The time finally came to dig into the pizzas, and we all had a great time talking and eating. I realized how important it is to carve out time to share with others- it’s a must since everyone has different schedules. During secondary applications, I didn't have much time to just sit and talk, so it felt great to finally be able to simply HANG OUT and chill with my housemates. And Lord, those pizzas were delicious! I went to bed that night with a full belly and a happy heart. I can’t wait for the next house dinner!

Also, in case you’re dying to partake in this pizza fun, here’s the recipe for the dough:

1 tsp. honey

1 tsp. salt

2 tsp. yeast

1 c. lukewarm water

3 ½ c. flour

2 tbsp. oil

Mix yeast and water, wait 15 minutes. Add oil, salt, honey, and flour. Knead. BAM, yummy pizza dough.

Tuna corn pizza? Awesome. (Strange, I know.)

Oh gosh, so much FLAVOR.

One of my housemates, Tanja from Germany. She's awesome :)