Pizza and Other Miscellaneous Stuff

A new restaurant opened this past Tuesday.  It's a pizza parlor with other Italian dishes coming soon.  I heard the reason Ed began this enterprise was because he hadn't been able to get a good pizza since he got here and figured that if he wanted it, others would as well.  Having had nothing to compare it to (here in Cotacachi) I can't tell you whether it's better than the others or not but it's darned good.  It's advertised as authentic New York style pizza and I think he definitely hit the mark.  He imported the pepperoni from the States but wisely decided to go for local oregano, tomatoes, and cheese.

Here's Ed with half a pizza (I was going to photograph mine but discovered I had neglected to put a memory card in my camera before I left home and when I got back he had already served the two full-sized pizzas he had in the oven when I left).

Ed has obviously never run a restaurant before but I have confidence that he'll learn pretty quickly what he needs to do to make a true success of this one.  One of the things I'm looking forward to is him getting pizza boxes for take-out.


On my way home I passed the tienda next to the pizza parlor and there, out front, was an empty banana stalk.  Having never seen one before, I simply HAD to take a picture.  Just as I snapped the shot, the owner came out and had me come in and take another one of the bananas she had still on the stalk.  Um, with as ripe as they are, I'm not sure how she's going to manage to sell them before they go bad.  Maybe I should talk to her about buying some over-ripe ones on the cheap for banana bread. 

While I was in there I saw exactly what I need every once in a while--a fan.  Beautifully handwoven, isn't it?

The pizza parlor is just barely a block from my apartment and the tienda is right next door to it.  Before I got back to my apartment I reached into my pocket to get my key out and discovered I'd left it in the apartment.  Well, I guess I had to lock myself out of my apartment at some point, right?  So, as I passed my apartment I saw one of our local street sweepers cleaning up and thought you might like to see one of our low-tech examples of city maintenance.  One of these days I'll see if I can get a picture of our equally low-tech street repair.

So there's my little bit of local Ecuadorian color for today.  I think I may have to take my camera with me more often.  It never would have occurred to me to go out looking for any of this but it was fun catching it when I did.