Saturday 11 July 2009

Pizza Delivery

I woke up this morning craving pizza.

There have been a few things that I really miss (my microwave is at the top of the list), but I haven't missed American food that much- until today.

We have been eating plenty of somewhat American food. If we are in the city all day we eat there (with traffic and the cost of gas it is not worth it to go back to the guest house), so we made a trip to Ranchers in the Garden City Mall for burgers (not worth it- they tasted like meatloaf), we had an excellent lunch at Gately on the Nile in Jinja, and we had decent chicken sandwiches at Chicken Inn, although they double charged us for soda and refused to correct it. Mzungu prices are lame. And Top Up is not ketchup, or anything even close. Also I have been cooking what I can with the ingredients and utensils that I have access to. I have made a passable casserole, chicken and potatoes, soft tacos, quesadillas, and macaroni and cheese (Kraft from home). Lately I have been practicing my Ugandan cooking, so we have been eating matooke, posho, and bean sauce. But no pizza.

At home we have a bread machine and a pizza stone so we have pizza quite often. Here I don't have anything that remotely resembles either of those two things, and I am not about to attempt pizza in a stove with no temperature gauge. So this morning when I woke up longing for pizza I figured my case was hopeless.

In the early afternoon we approached Alfred about our dilemma. We knew there was pizza in Kampala, but our car/driver were in a minor accident yesterday, so we are without our usual wheels until Tuesday. I have no desire to get into an African taxi, and even less desire to take my baby in one. Multiply that times one hundred for my feelings about riding a boda boda (motorcycle transport- no helmets).

We first asked Alfred if there were any restaurants serving Mzungu food within walking distance. No such luck.

Then we asked if there was any way that we could have some delivered, specifically pizza. He said maybe, but he would have to call and ask. It had happened before, and he still had the phone number of the delivery guy. He told us he would call when we wanted the food and find out if it was possible.

I waited and waited. I was hungry at four. But Ugandans eat late, and they think we are crazy for eating at six, so I decided I would wait until at least five. At maybe one minute passed five I asked Alfred to make the phone call. He did, and told us we could get pizza!

We had some things to sort out about how we would order (the directions were lost in translation), but finally we got our order in: one Hawaiian and one pepperoni.
The pizza arrived at about six. It was the best thing ever. I ate half of a large pizza (in my defense their "large" is maybe an American medium). I am totally having cold pizza for breakfast tomorrow.

I have at least three, probably four, hopefully not five, weeks left here. I have a feeling that pizza delivery guy is going to be hearing from me again.

1 comment:

Heather said...

That's funny. I usually get that way about Mexican food when we travel for awhile.