December 22 - Australia: Cairns
Today wasn't very exciting. Jon spent most of the day de-bugging the computer and pulling out what's left of his hair. He sat on the phone for a while, trying to get in touch with Norton Anti-Virus to figure out why the software uninstalled itself after we'd run it.
He's now convinced that we need a firewall on our computer at home. Especially if he gets his way and turns a computer into a home server. Then again, by the time we get home, what was a spiffy new computer will likely be an archaic dinosaur.
After he'd finished - after 3 DAYS of de-bugging - the computer is now virus and Nimda-free. And Norton Anti-Virus is up to date so we should be protected from this happening again.
Pizzas - from scratch!
Jon was inspired by the recent "Christmas in New York" episode of "The Naked Chef" (see December 15). It wasn't the "New York" part that inspired him (although it was a good episode), but rather the pizzas that were made from scratch. So he surfed around on the 'Net to find some good pizza crust recipes and went to town on our little counter-top-island. The difficulty is that we don't have a rolling pin for the dough. To get around this minor obstacle, Jon decided that our large jar of peanut butter would work just as well. And apparently, it did!
He decided to forego the traditional tomato sauce in favor of some diced tomatoes with garlic, basil, and olive oil. .
Jon Chopping Tomatoes for the Pizzas
He also added mushrooms, onions, pineapples, and ham. All in all, the pizza prep time took much longer than we'd anticipated (3.5 hours!), but he was really excited about them despite the hard work involved.
When the pizzas went into the oven, I threw together the chicken mixture for a "Chicken Enchilada" recipe that we love to cook at home, and will eat on Christmas Eve. The Connals have a tradition of Mexican on XMas Eve and - while I've no idea where this came from - one doesn't question an ingrained tradition such as this.
We finally ate the pizzas around 8:00PM, and they were definitely worth the wait!
Isn't he cute? Best Pizza Boy I've ever seen!
The pizzas were very, very yummy. And we had enough for leftovers which is great.