The Joy of the Evangeline Maid / Garlic Bread Dumplings with Rustic Tomato Sauce

I believe everyone in Acadiana has an Evangeline Maid memory. For me, just the picture of the Maid fills my head with happy times when I was little. My Dad was raising me and my brother on his own. Which means he had to work hard and keep us on a very strict budget. We would drive into Lafayette occasionally to shop. We endured the day, the drive, and hours spent running beyond boring errands because we knew that our last stop was the Evangeline Maid store in Fightinville. As soon as we saw the spinning loaf by the factory we knew that pure joy was the next step. We didn’t know it was a discount store. We just knew it was the store where we could go shopping with little restrictions. All those beautiful bags of sliced Evangeline Maid bread, hot dog buns, hamburger buns, all of it right there for us to grab. Shelves full of sweet baked treats that were only occasional visitors in our pantry. Walking out with bags full of soft white bread and treats was done with an ecstatic skip and hop. We would go home and lay out all our goodies as we had just finished trick or treating. The Evangeline Maid was and will always be a symbol of joy and comfort to me. Going to that little store still fills me with joy and my basket of all the wonderfulness that Evangeline Maid produces.

I found a very old Sicilian recipe for bread dumplings the more I studied it the more I thought how great would this be simmered in a rich tomato sauce. Then my love of garlic bread came through and I decided to give these dumplings a little more flavor. Made with the Evangeline Maid soft white bread and adding roasted garlic produced a light and flavorful dumpling with all the flavors of garlic bread. One small change and this becomes a great dish for vegetarians who are missing spaghetti and meatballs.

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