Living without dairy

It has been eight months now since I made the transition to changing my eating habits to vegan.  I have stumbled here and there, but for the most part I am proud to say that I have been deligent and focused. The hardest challenge has been dairy.  I still occasionlly crave a glass of milk. I use soy, rice or almond milk on my cereal or oatmeal, and use the non-dairy milk when I'm cooking, but there are times when I would love to have a big old glass of dairy milk. So I don't have it in the house anymore.  I was buying dairy milk for my husband, and the only time he used it was on cereal.  But he announced last month not to buy it anymore, since he was using rice milk most of the time anyway. So if I don't have dairy milk in the fridge I can't be tempted.  With time I am sure that the craving will disappear. My son Daniel has made almond milk and this is something that I want to try.

Living without eggs has not been a problem.  I love the Veganaise brand of mayonnaise and use it all the time.  Other brands that I tried just didn't measure up to Veganaise. The Ener-G powdered egg substitute, blending flax seed and water, and vinegar are all great ways to bake without eggs.

 Cheese has been another hurdle.  The commercial vegan cheese substitutes are not great.  About the only one that I can say that I use all the time is the Parmesan.  Using tofu and nutritional yeast is a great way to layer a lasagna and my husband loves it.  (see the recipe for lasagna) The shredded veggie cheese is not great, although the mozzarella is better than the cheddar. I will use the mozzarella veggie cheese when I want that melted taste like on our homemade pizzas.

My son Daniel sent me a recipe several months ago for Kale Salad with Cashew Cheese and I planned to try it but it got lost in my file of "recipes to try".  The idea of cashews tasting like cheese threw me off, and I thought I would be disappointed.  But I had some Kale in the fridge and desperately wanted to learn to make this vegetable part of my diet. It was great!  I'll post the recipe this week. Another recipe that I am going to try this week is baked macaroni and cheese using the cashew cream. I'll let you know how it turns out.

Another experiment that I plan to make this week is actually making a hard cheese from the cashew recipe.  According to the author the cheese can be sliced for crackers, or shredded.