words by Williams

Nearly five weeks in to life with Betsy and we’re still finding things out. Well, we’re finding some things out, and reinforcing previous lessons at the same time.

First a discovery, which also reinforces the lesson that barbecues aren’t toys.

It is this: Your Cadac gas barbie is a beautifully designed piece of kit which aims to enhance the outdoor life with precision-engineered barbieness that allows it to get fiercely hot in no time at all.

We bought ours through an offer from the Caravan and Motorhome Club. 

As part of the offer, we received a free pizza stone, which should get fiercely hot very quickly, thus enabling you to burn pizzeria-style pizza in next to no time at all.

The Cadac is meant to invoke the spirit of the Braai - the super-efficient South African barbie. It is meant to be operated close to the ground as though roasting Springbok on the wide veld on it’s spindly, spring-loaded legs.

It helps to pander to this pretence and not imagine that the Cadac works better on a shelf that’s probably just a bit too high to reach comfortably.

This inevitably lead to the reinforcement of a previous lesson: Pizza stones are the work of the devil.

I have friends whose near-idyllic marriage was nearly brought down not long after their 25th anniversary, because he - admittedly unaided but abetted by me - managed to burn the bottom of a series of pizzas in their new Ooni wood-fired oven.

The simple truth is this. Any pizza stone used in any super-efficient outdoor heating contrivance will super heat, super quickly.

It will therefore burn any number of pizzas before something resembling edible is produced.

And, when used in combination with a poorly (not to say dangerously) sited Cadac, will cause the device to leap from it onto the recently acquired Next garden carpet and proceed to melt it’s way through to the earth’s core. I’ve found.

A subsidiary lesson… Any attempt to pick up said pizza stone in a blind panic will, more than likely, result in blisters. You have been warned.