Westinghouse outdoor pizza oven simple to use
Comfort lasts with OneOdio headphones
Backyard pizza ovens aren’t becoming a thing – they are a thing. What was once considered a novelty should now be considered a necessity given how easy and well they work. Sure, there are differences in the choices and price – some work on gas, some on wood chips – and that’s just one of the features.
I recently tested the Westinghouse Artisan Outdoor Pizza Oven, which connects to a standard propane gas tank like you would use for a gas grill. Overall, unboxing and connecting it to the propane took just a few minutes. It’s vital to remember it works with an oven and gas, and as such, to ensure the connection is correct and adult-supervised before the pizza tossing begins.
The portable (25-pound) oven is constructed with stainless steel and foldout legs to use right out of the box. For cooking, the legs must be folded out while it sits on any flat surface and then folded when putting the oven away.
There’s a lot to choose from with pizza ovens. Searching “backyard pizza oven” on Amazon brought out hundreds of options. So going into this, you know they have different features, which will cause them to cook differently. The size of the unit and the pizza it can cook, portability, cost and how the pizza cooks on the stone are just a few of the features to consider.
With the Westinghouse model, there’s a little to it for cooking pizzas up to 13 inches in diameter. But I’ll give you the ending now: It’s simple to use, and the results are outstanding. After it’s unpacked, including the oven, pizza stone and some pizzathemed cooking utensils, you can cook almost instantly.
One end of a 4-foot gas line is attached to the back of the oven. The other end attaches to your gas tank. Again, please ensure with adult supervision that the connection is proper.
Once it’s connected and the pizza stone is inside the oven, a back knob turns the oven on and has a dial thermostat.
Preheating the oven and stone is recommended for 15 minutes. The pizza oven can reach temperatures as high as 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit in time, high enough to cook a pizza in 90 seconds. After your first time or two, making pizza is as easy as making toast.
Once you’re settled on a pizza oven, the pizza itself is a big part of the process, which doesn’t come with the oven. I found a local supermarket that sells freshly made pizza dough, but they sell out daily, which taught me to plan and get there early. Or, create your own, which I will not take credit for, but my wife does have it down pat.
After preparing the pizza, you have to get it in the oven. The first try was challenging, along with being careful about the oven’s heat. Lesson learned: Flour is your best friend for sliding the pizza off the wooden pizza paddle, onto the hot pizza stone, and removing it upon completion.
A big part of the trial and error is how long it takes to cook and turn the pizza. As much as I wanted my pizza cooked in seconds, my best formula had the thermostat set at 75%. Having it at 100% was just too high. At the lower temperature, I put my pizza in, cooked it for about 60 seconds, then used a stainless steel paddle to take it out, turned it, and put it back in for another 60 seconds. Perfection!
How long you cook depends on how you like it, the ingredients cooking, how thick your crust is, and whether you want it well done. Inexperienced pizza cooking does take a few tries. But I’ll add that even the mistakes tasted great.
The Westinghouse Artisan Outdoor Pizza Oven is simple, but it’s all you’ll need. On my third night of cooking pizza (all within the first week), we had friends over; their only requirement was to bring some pizza toppings. The pizzas went in and out of the oven as fast as my home chef could make them.
Pizza ovens are also great for more than a pizza. Other friends mentioned they use theirs to cook chicken, burgers, etc. So I tried that one night, and yep, it worked great. Again, it would be best to get used to the temperature with the adjustable dial and times, but that didn’t take long.
For dessert, slicing up a roll of homemade chocolate chip cookie dough was a great finishing touch for the dinner before the oven was put to bed for the night. While the pizza oven is great for backyards, don’t hesitate to take it on vacation with the family to a campsite, tailgate parties or even to the beach.
$299.99 for the gas model, $209.99 for cooking with wood pellets
westinghousehomeware.com
OneOdio Monitor 60 over-the-head professional wired headphones are price-friendly at $79.99 and are designed for various listening options.
The first thing you notice about the ergonomic designed Monitor 60s before the sound reaches your ears is the comfort, which doesn’t waver even after long periods. Once the breathable memoryprotein earmuffs reach your ears, you understand. Each ear cup swivels 90 degrees forward and backward.
Behind the earmuffs are 50 mm dual dynamic drivers, which produce hi-res audio ideal for top audio pros, audiophiles, DJs and daily music listening.
Testing the sound during TV watching and music playlists delivered clear, crisp sound with a nice amount of bass. Even having them on during an evening news broadcast provided clear audio at high and low volume levels.
The black headphones with silver highlights have an adjustable padded headband that connects the leather-like ear pads and is made with jewelrygrade stainless steel and folds up for easy storage in the included bag.
www.oneodio.com
Florida, under Gov. Ron DeSantis and Republican Legislature, is increasingly hard to recognize. It’s an intolerant and repressive place that bears scant resemblance to the Sunshine State of just a few years ago.
The 2023 legislative session cemented those appalling setbacks. Florida is now a state where government intrusion into the personal lives of Floridians is commonplace. What will it take for citizens to push back on this unprecedented encroachment on their rights? And, more broadly, what if Desantis supporters get what they want, which is to “make America Florida”?
The latest round of laws makes Florida sound more and more dystopian — something voters in the rest of the nation should note if they are considering what a DeSantis presidency could look like. The state has new rules for who can use which bathroom, what pronouns can be used in schools, which books can be taught and when women can get an abortion (almost never.) There are measures to strip union protections from public employees, keep transgender children and their parents from choosing to seek medical treatment, prevent universities from discussing diversity or inclusion and ban talk of gender identity or sexuality in schools all the way through 12th grade.
The governor, meanwhile, is consolidating power — with a personal militia to do his bidding and the ability, granted by the ever-compliant Legislature, to fly undocumented immigrants around the country on taxpayer dollars. Guns will be easier to carry, and the death penalty will be easier to impose, thanks to DeSantis and the Legislature.
GROUPS TARGETED
Forbidden speech, attacks on the rights of vulnerable groups, union-busting, a governor-controlled State Guard? Welcome to the mean state of Florida.
This session, lawmakers seemed to take delight in passing bills designed to push already-marginalized groups into the shadows. One bans children from drag shows (where’s parental freedom now?) Another makes it a misdemeanor to use and educating others about the importance of DEI in providing care to our communities.
We cannot afford to move backward in our efforts toward health equity. bathrooms in public schools and other government buildings if the bathroom doesn’t correspond with your sex at birth.
That’s the same bill that led Rep. Webster Barnaby, a Republican from Deltona, to erupt into a thundering, Old Testamentstyle tirade at a House Commerce Committee meeting in April, calling transgender people “demons,” “imps” and “mutants from another planet.” He apologized later, but the fact that he felt free enough to go on that rant speaks volumes about the way Republicans in Tallahassee are thinking. And though the words were abhorrent even to some Republicans, in the end, that didn’t make a dent. The bill passed.
Lawmakers still had plenty more punishment to dole out: Florida also will start prohibiting teachers from asking for students’ preferred gender pronouns in schools, expanding the “Don’t say gay” law, and criminalizing gender-affirming care.
In addition to making it legal to carry a loaded and concealed gun, without training or a permit — that’s HB 543 — lawmakers made sure under SB 450 to lower the bar for the death penalty to eight votes from a 12member jury, the lowest in the nation. They did that knowing that Florida has the highest number of exonerations in the country, with 30 people since 1973 wrongfully convicted and sent to Death Row, only to be cleared years later.
What happens if we continue to convict the wrong people?
Republicans clearly don’t care. They had one main goal this session: to make DeSantis more right-wing than potential White House rival Donald Trump.
COURT CHALLENGE
They may have succeeded with the six-week abortion ban, which goes into effect if the state’s current 15-week law weathers an ongoing legal challenge in the state Supreme Court.
The six-week ban is especially cruel and punitive because many women don’t know they are pregnant within at that point. That could amount to forced pregnancy, a hellish concept if there ever was one — and one that may make even staunch Republicans blanch.
And don’t forget about immigration. Lawmakers sure didn’t. They passed a bill that will give DeSantis $12 million to continue his inhumane migrant relocation effort — the one that drew national attention last year when he treated a group of migrants like pawns, flying them from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard. The government will also prohibit local governments from providing money to organizations that issue identification cards to people illegally in the country and will require hospitals that accept Medicaid to ask about citizenship — no doubt intended to dissuade undocumented immigrants from seeking medical care.
Banning speech, discouraging medical care for immigrants, making transgender people feel unwelcome while making women less free and loosening up gun laws? This dark and angry place isn’t the Florida we know. It’s not the Florida we want.
Voters across the country should take note. As we head into a presidential election, the Florida that is emerging today under DeSantis’ tight control is a bleak cautionary tale.