Vine and Dine, south of the border pizza

I could swear that Tami Noyes' biggest job - next to creating mouthwatering recipes - is to dream up ways to get us bloggers active. On top of her Food Network Friday Challenges to veganize Food TV recipes, now she has come up with Vine and Dine. In these cookalongs we are following one particular vegan recipe and choose a wine to accompany the meal. This is all lovely, except for those not well immersed in wine-lore. We would be among those folks. Luckily I was able to pass the wine baton to my husband who after a little coaxing agreed to take on  the wine part of the challenge. I think I got the better deal.

First the food: This is a recipe from The Vegan Table. Beans on pizza are not a combination most people think of as compatible, and neither did we at first. Fortunately it all worked out. The crust contains cornmeal which keeps in tune with the Tex-Mex theme. The toppings are typical of the theme as well, vegan cheese, jalapeno, beans, salsa and sour cream. Although I wouldn't have beans on my pizza again, it nevertheless made one very interesting meal.

The Wine: My hubby will be covering the write-up of the wine:

When my wife told me we would be doing the Vine and Dine with a Southwest Pizza, I was skeptical. I wasn’t keen on a non-traditional take on a family favorite but I try to keep an open mind, especially when it comes to my favorite chef’s creative interpretations of certain recipes. I was given the task of picking the wine to be paired with this unusual pizza preparation and I immediately started thinking of a red.

I don’t really have much of a nose for wines, I prefer libations with far fewer variations and more of a straight to the point affect, and I should have paid closer attention. I started looking for an organic vegan red and got so wrapped up in checking the label that when I found “Vegan Friendly” and “Organic” on a bottle of Our Daily Red, I overlooked the screw top on the bottle. After getting the bottle of wine home, I was loath to go back out to correct my mistake; we decided to give this selection a chance, although we doubted it had much of one.

I will start by saying that the Southwest Pizza was a pleasant surprise and turned out to be excellent. Pairing wines with food is a very difficult thing to do, given that very few wine pairings actually end up enhancing or complementing the flavors of the dishes they are paired with. I was disappointed in the wine, “Our Daily Red”, in my opinion it is a “Box Wine” in a bottle and it has far too much bitterness for my taste.

After our meal, I was curious to see if anyone out there had a different take on this wine so I did a Web-Search and found this comment: “Our Daily Red is full bodied yet smooth and mild. This easy-drinking red wine blend is comprised of Syrah, Carignan & Cabernet Sauvignon grapes. This variety creates a rich ruby color and a relatively mellow flavor with flavors that blend well together rather than compete for attention”. I think there must be something wrong with my selected search engine because I do not think that either “easy-drinking” or “mellow flavor” is an appropriate adjective when describing this wine. I will say that the wine is “Full-Bodied” but given the bitterness of this selection, I’d say the body is in the bottle.

cracker barrel's - chicken'n dumplins

Cracker Barrel is the place that dots America's highway landscape, featuring tons of rocking chairs on their front porch...and practically nothing that a vegan can eat on their menu - even their vegetables sided are cooked with meat.

I worked at Cracker Barrel for about a whole week in the early 90's. The place was nothing to write home about - my parents lived a thousand miles away - and so probably never knew about my forage into the land of the Country Store. After all, what more could you want after filling up on Hashbrown Casserole and some Homemade Fried Chicken Livers than to mosey on out to the Country Store to pick you up some Kenny Rogers CD and some Black Licorice Bites. So good.

How do we go from rocking chairs to Chicken n' Dumplins? Kate asked for it. Not necessarily Cracker Barrel's version, but you need to mix up your repertoire of recipes once in a while.

Cracker Barrel's dumplings are a little different from mine. I mix the batter into a loose consistency and drop them onto the simmering broth. They end up light and fluffy. Cracker Barrel's is a rolled dough that is cut into small (1/2 inch) rectangles and then dropped into the broth. They are stirred while they cook. Theirs is more of a European dumpling rather than the American-Bisquik-mix-dumpling.

While Cracker Barrel does have a great Chicken n' Dumplin recipe, I prefer my chicken with less chicken , so I used  Tender Seitan. Also, we like more vegetables in our dish - C.B. has little - like carrots, celery and onion. So, by all means, make this dish since it is very tasty, but feel free to add some veggies into the mix.

Cost Breakdown

dough: $1

seitan: $3

broth: $1

spices: $.25

onion, garlic: $.75

Total to make 5 servings:

$6.00

VEG-Aside: My heart goes out to the victims of the tornadoes that ripped across the South recently. However, my heart is not limited to the human victims, but extends to the victims of the factory farms who were just as hurt by the storms themselves, but more directly, by their confinement.

 While the people were caught in homes of their own, the thousands of chickens that are still trapped by homes not of their own making is different. When you are trapped, not just during the tornadoes, but afterwards, bound by man-made-walls, where food, but more importantly, lack of water, is concerned, life and death seem closer than the suffering that is all too close.

The government is actively seeking to help the human victims of this crisis, but the victims hidden by our labels of 'food' are ignored and not even acknowledged as the living, feeling beings that  they are ... currently without food and water. Right now. Without water. Try that - no water for two days...three days...five days...a week....

Little we can do about the current conditions right now; but, right now we can ...

Let the truth be know...Leaflet for the Future.