Like most homes, mornings around here start with a sleepy walk to the kitchen for a starter beverage. As I fill the tea kettle with water I always take a look out the window and see my dear clay oven.  Yep, love it…an oven…but so much more.

Today I’m thinking about how I collected wine bottles for the insulative layer below the hearth. Without it the cold earth below would drain the heat out as fast as the fire created it. Thus in the heart of my oven, I constructed two layers of wine bottles that lay like little soldiers with a mixture of clay, water and sawdust wrapped around them. Over time the sawdust burns up and the air pockets in the sand and the bottles will keep my hearth nice and toasty to assure perfect, crisp pizza crusts.

Acquiring the bottles was perhaps one of my better plans. I asked my friends to share a bottle of wine and then forward the empty so that some of their good energy was in the oven. Pretty soon every time I ran into a friend a bottle was handed off. Better yet, I started going to the post office and boxes were arriving. Post marks from Philadelphia, Boston, Colorado, New York, Florida and more. The postmaster was starting to ask questions especially when I would rip open the box as soon as my hands touched it and squeal with excitement over an empty bottle. No doubt he thought something significant was missing from the bottle.

Bottles and friends. What a perfect metaphor for the roles friends play in my life. If you were to re-read the second paragraph and substitute “friends” for bottles and “me” for oven references, you might understand why I see more than mortar, stones and clay when I look out that kitchen window in the morning. I am blessed to have so many friends that insulate me and keep my fire burning strong.

Light the candles as it’s time to celebrate my business, On the Spot Gourmet, turning five years old.  Funny how for the past three years I’ve been telling everyone that I’ve been a personal chef for two years. How life flies by. In that same sense, “a couple months ago” I started building a clay oven on my patio.

I was in need of an adventure as there wasn’t any foreign travel on the books and I get restless to see what is out there.

I was determined to gather materials from friends and kindred spirits. After all, doesn’t everyone have a few cinder blocks left over from a project? Sure enough, my calls were answered but instead of backing my car up to the garage for nice clean blocks, I was under decks and in the hollows of backyard brush piles. While one trip to Home Depot would have saved all the trouble, I was loving “the find” and beginning to connect with the many gifts this oven would offer.

Between watching YouTube on how to build a block wall, having Jimmy give me a crash course on how to mortar stone, and reading Kiko Denzer’s book on how to construct an oven, I wandered my way into doing things that I really wasn’t sure how to do. I felt risk both personally and publically (the Hiram Village had taken quite an interest in watching the progress and guessing what it was). Hours became days and then weeks as each stage in the construction moved along. From sore hands grew a deeper connection with doing things starting at their simplest form. From the ache in my back came the reminder that no department-store-short-cuts can produce anything close to what simple, clean, ingredients from the earth have to offer. And from the moment the first fire was lit on the hearth, I became eternally hooked on what else the peel will reveal.

In my upcoming posts I will be sharing more insights and adventures from the oven--be that the clay oven on my patio, the oven at the new Terrier bakery, or the many ovens that I find myself near. Come along for the ride.