After a day of lackluster food (not to mention yesterday’s total and utter failure) I needed a foolproof dinner for this, the first Friday of August. The obvious choice: pizza! We picked up ingredients on the way back from the gym yesterday, so all I had to do was make the dough and assemble our pie tonight.

I used this recipe for the dough; it’s an old standby and pretty reliable, producing a nice, soft puffy dough. I always add herbs as recommended. For the sauce, Steven and I love Don Pepino, which comes in a can and is available at our local Wegmans. We first bought it because that old-school design was just irresistible, and it turns out that it’s super tasty, too! Although I often make cashew cheese for my pizza, I decided to try Violife’s mozzarella shreds this time. I’m a bit of a Violife fangirl these days; the products are great, and I appreciate that everything is nut-free. Their parmesan wedge is easily one of the best vegan cheeses I’ve ever tried, so I was eager to give the mozz a whirl. We topped our pie with halved cherry tomatoes from the garden and some pickled banana pepper rings. Not terribly exciting, but sometimes you just want a simple cheesy pizza.

And that’s exactly what we got. As usual, I baked it on a pizza stone covered in cornmeal to prevent sticking… truthfully, I’m not sure how much crispier this makes the crust, but I’d like to think there’s a difference! We also cracked open a tasty Beaujolais — a friend once said that pizza and wine should be the go-to pairing, not pizza and beer, and that makes sense to me.

And about that Violife mozz — I tried a few cold shreds and was shocked that they were edible, unlike Daiya. Melted, the Violife was quite mild, although I guess I’d prefer that to aggressively unpleasant, as other cheeses can be!

Not a bad Friday night at all.