Round 2: Day Two.

One of the best things about doing this project is finding new foods to fall in love with. Like last year, the dessert lock down makes me hungrier for real food. I don't know if this is just my body's calorie intake making up for the missing empty sugars or if it's because, without the ending of dessert, I just don't know when to stop eating the meal. Regardless of the reason, food becomes very important to me. And in the absence of a sweet ending, the taste of my meal is paramount. It has to be delicious enough to make up for the loss of chocolate.

Last night I found a delicious food combination: Pesto Pizza and White Zin. While both would have been good on their own, this is one pairing that just fit so perfectly together they could start cravings, like veggie burgers and milk shakes. While I'm aware that there are probably plenty of sugars in wine, as I said there must be some allowances. I'm by no means an alcoholic, but I am in my twenties and I do work in the service industry where dealing with a**holes all day requires a nightcap to wind down most evenings. [Be nice to your servers, you could prevent a drinking problem.] I prefer sweet wine to dry which implies more sugars by name alone, but I'm not sure if the sugars are added or if they are naturally occurring in the fruits within [which is allowed for this project]. So let's investigate, shall we?

According the results of a quick google search [under the oh-so specific search words of 'sugar' and 'wine'], the sugar is naturally occurring. More specifically:

'Sugar chemistry helps to explain its role in wine. One of these is fermentation, where yeasts metabolize sugars for energy, yielding alcohol as a major byproduct. In dry wine, yeasts consume almost all of the sugar from the grapes. In sweet wine, the yeasts are killed before all the sugar is used, leaving residual sugars.' [Source: CalWineries]

So perhaps my White Zin comes guilt-free after all.