Creating every pizza combination you can think of
Story by Scottie Vickery
Photos by Mackenzie Free
There’s nothing quite like a warm summer day by the water, and as far as Terry and Cheri Grabany are concerned, the warmer the better. In fact, 900 degrees is just about perfect – for making dinner in their lakeside pizza oven, that is.
Terry built the wood-fired oven by the water’s edge of their Logan Martin Lake home about seven years ago, and since then, feeding family and friends has been as easy as (pizza) pie.
“Pizzas are just so quick and easy to do,” Terry said. “I buy all the stuff, and everyone makes their own,” Cheri added. They’ve tried just about every topping combination over the years, and whether it’s brisket and veggies, Canadian bacon and pineapple, or just lots of cheese (their grandchildren’s favorite), every version has offered a slice or two of heaven.
“There’s nothing better,” Cheri said. So, what exactly makes it so good? In addition to enjoying the mouthwatering meal, “you get to be out here and see all of this,” Terry said, gesturing at the sunlight bouncing off the water and the trees and flowers dotting the shoreline. “It’s just beautiful.”
Everything about their move to the lake in 2015 has been beautiful, in fact. Although they bought the lot and the single-wide mobile home that was on it at the time as a weekend retreat, it wasn’t long before the lure of full-time lake life became too strong to ignore. They made the move in 2021 before building their 3-bedroom, 2 bath cottage in 2022.
Since then, the lazy days of summer – and fall, winter and spring – have meant lots of time with family and friends. The focus is on food and fun, which is where Terry’s construction expertise has come in handy.
He’s worked in equipment maintenance for the City of Hoover for the past 24 years, and his building skills have served him well when it comes to the mechanics of making food for a crowd. He’s built everything from a 20-foot barbecue trailer used for Hoover’s Pig Iron BBQ Challenge and SEC baseball tournaments to a 12-foot oven used to make giant apple pies for the city’s annual Celebrate Hoover Day.
That’s why, when the Grabanys’ daughters asked Terry if he could make a pizza oven, his reply was a simple, “I guess.” He did his homework first, researching fireproof bricks and mortar and the best way to build the outdoor oven. “Most of the time when the girls ask, I make it happen,” he said.
The pizza oven gives Cheri and Terry one more option when entertaining. In addition to the kitchen, where Cheri handles the meal prep and sides, Terry built a barbecue trailer of his own. They’ve got two smokers, a grill big enough to cook 50 hamburgers at a time, and a boiler they use to make Cajun dishes.
“We feed people here,” Cheri said with a laugh. “It’s an all-day thing,” Terry added. “Whatever anyone wants, we’ll cook it. We’ll have barbecue for lunch and then fire up the pizza oven and put barbecue on pizzas that night.” S’mores, which they have discovered are even more ooey and gooey when cooked in the pizza oven, are the perfect end to lots of perfect lake days.
Meant to be
Owning a home on the water was always part of their future plans, but about 10 years ago, Terry decided he didn’t want to wait. Although the couple lived in Hayden, he started looking at properties on Logan Martin, where Cheri’s brother’s family and other friends and relatives live and where their daughter and son-in-law, Lindsey and William Weller, have since bought a home.
“It was always a retirement dream,” Terry said of buying a lake home. “I was raised on the Warrior River, and I always wanted to come back to the water.”
In 2015, Terry spotted a house near Stemley Bridge on Craigslist, but when he called about it, the owners said they already had an offer. The Grabanys asked to see it anyway, and they fell in love with the view. “I sat down in the swing (that is still on their pier) and looked out over the water and said, ‘I can do this,’” Cheri remembers.
The folks who had made an offer on the home missed the deadline, so the owners asked Terry and Cheri if they wanted it. “We wrote it up on a legal pad and a handshake,” he said.
“We just knew it was going to work out,” Cheri said. The house number was the same as their home in Hayden, where they’d raised Lindsey and her sister, Cory. And the cost of the house was just 97 cents more than the amount they had available from financing and the savings they planned to use.
In addition, when Cory told a friend from work about the house her parents bought, the friend realized that it used to be her family’s home. “We just knew God had his hand all over this,” Cheri said.
The Lord also provided a peaceful place for her to heal. Less than six months after buying their lakeside retreat, Cheri was diagnosed with colon cancer. A month later, she had a melanoma removed, and the next year doctors discovered she had a brain tumor.
Despite the three diagnoses, Cheri is cancer-free today and is grateful for all she survived. “Terry always says, ‘I wish it had been me,’ but I tell him I’m glad it wasn’t,’” she said. “He’s not a talker, and he wouldn’t go up and tell people everything that God did like I do.”
Details matter
The lake provided the perfect balm during the healing process and became a refuge during the COVID pandemic. In 2021, after Cheri retired from her bookkeeping job at Hayden Elementary School, they began thinking about moving to the lake full-time.
The decision got a lot easier to make in March of that year when “someone came and knocked on the door of our house in Hayden and asked if we were interested in selling,” Cheri said. “God had his hand in that, too.”
Not long after moving into the mobile home, “we had some pretty bad weather,” she said. “We had trees cracking all around us and I told him if I was going to stay here, I was going to need a house.”
Once they decided on a floorplan and some of the finishing touches, Terry, a pencil portrait artist, drew up the very detailed house plans. “I’ve drawn all my life,” he said, estimating that the portraits, which almost look like black and white photographs, take about 30 to 40 hours to complete. “I’ve just never had a designated space to draw.”
He does now, after recently finishing the attic space that includes a drawing nook by the window. The room, which has a ping pong table, television set and plenty of toys, gets lots of use when Cory and her husband, Caleb Townsend, and their children, Cora Jane and Case, head to the lake from their Gardendale home. “We’re trying to get them to move to the lake, too,” Cheri said.
Although Terry has created portraits of celebrities including Nick Saban, Lucille Ball and Adele, his favorite is the one he drew of Case. While Cheri loves that one, as well, she’ll always have a soft spot in her heart for the drawing of two puppies in a basket. “He gave that to me when we were dating. Actually, we had broken up, and he used that to woo me back,” she said with a laugh.
Special touches
While Cheri and Terry’s house is newly built, it’s filled with family memories and personal touches. Terry made the metal and wooden entry table that holds family photos and a 200-year-old vase that was Cheri great-great-grandmother’s.
A clock her great-grandmother received as a wedding present in 1906 has a prominent place in the guest room, and the images of two little girls that Cheri’s mother cross-stitched for Lindsey and Cory hang over twin beds in another.
Terry made the mantles for the fireplaces in the great room and on the screened porch, which both have an amazing view of the water. And the pizza oven and fireplace were made from stone that was at their Hayden home.
Although they both commute to work – Cheri now works at B&A Warehouse in Birmingham – they agree that making their retirement dream come true a little earlier than planned has been well worth it.
“I love being at the lake,” Terry said. “When you get home from work, it’s just so relaxing. It’s an instant calm when you walk out and see the water.”
Homemade Pizza
Ingredients
- Pizza crust or dough
- Pizza sauce
- Cheese
- Favorite toppings, including pepperoni, barbecue, Canadian bacon, mushrooms, bell pepper, onions, ham, pineapple, brisket, etc.
Directions:
After a lot of trial and error, and in keeping with their laid-back lake lifestyle, the Grabanys have learned to keep things simple and use pre-made pizza crust and sauce. They provide a variety of toppings and let guests go crazy while creating their own pies. The pizzas bake about 10 minutes, and Terry uses a paddle to lift the pizza to the top of the oven at the end to ensure the cheese is melted well.
Barbecue Ribs
Barbecue Rub Ingredients:
- ½ cup brown sugar
- ¼ cup paprika
- 1 teaspoon white pepper
- 1 teaspoon black pepper
- 1 tablespoon salt
- 1 teaspoon chili powder
- 1 tablespoon garlic powder
- 1 tablespoon onion powder
- ¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper
- ½ teaspoon cumin
- ½ teaspoon oregano
- ½ teaspoon cocoa
- ¼ teaspoon cinnamon
Barbecue Sauce Ingredients:
- 1/3 cup honey
- ¼ cup barbecue sauce
- ¼ cup apple juice
- ½ cup apple cider vinegar
Ribs:
- French’s yellow mustard
- Parkay Squeeze
- Apple juice
- Brown sugar
Directions:
Rub ribs on both sides with mustard and barbecue rub. Smoke for 3 hours on open smoke. (Terry uses peach wood, apple wood or pecan wood.) Put ribs in foil, add Parkay squeeze, sprinkle with brown sugar, and add a little honey and apple juice. Wrap ribs and smoke two more hours. Remove foil and smoke ribs an additional hour.
Brush on barbecue sauce and enjoy!
