Today marks a week of being dairy-free.
Is it possible to be addicted to cheese? It feels like I am! Nearly everything I regularly make has some sort of dairy product in it... and those foods that don't have dairy will often get a sprinkling of parmesan. Mmmm, I make a delicious popcorn with olive oil, smoked paprika, and parmesan. I'll try not to cry over my thick and satisfying homemade yogurt.
Anyway, I'm not doing this for fun, or for moral reasons, or for my own dietary reasons. My month-old son is allergic to something I'm eating, and the doctor is certain it's dairy proteins... there's nothing like blood in a diaper to scare first-time parents and give one the proper motivation for a major dietary change. I may have to avoid milk products for a year.
It is now time for recipe experiments!
In an attempt to make the dairy-free life easier, I've been testing the waters with a few new recipes. I only had one box of almond milk on hand, so the first thing I tried was making a homemade "milk" from oats. It is oddly satisfying, but then, I like oatmeal flavor.
My favorite discovery so far is that breads seem to be easy to do. I've used the oat milk in place of milk, and melted coconut oil in place of melted butter, and my pumpkin dinner rolls came out just as moist and tasty as usual. And it turns out that my 2 favorite pizza dough recipes are dairy-free already.
My pizza experiment didn't go all that well, just making pizza but leaving out the cheese. However, I did do one pizza with beans, veggies, and BBQ sauce, and it was palatable. There's definitely room for improvement (next time, chicken instead of beans!), but I discovered that I very much prefer a cheese-free pizza if the sauce is not a red one... that way, I don't expect it to taste like pizza and I don't miss the gooey heavenly cheese as much.
My parents came by last weekend, and cheered me up by bringing some dairy substitutes... 2 types of "cheese," a "butter," and an "egg nog." Thank goodness there is fake cheese that melts properly! Times have really changed since the last time I tried to go dairy-free a decade or so ago.
Do you have any favorite dairy-free recipes to share?
