Thanks to chronic irritable stomach/bowl issues, I have finally decided this weekend that I can no longer eat diary. Latin@s shouldn’t be eating dairy much anyway, but hell, I grew up in the 70′s and what the hell did anybody know about eating well? I remember my parents used to buy 2-4 gallons of milk every three days or so, *that’s* how much milk we drank as a family.
And I’ve had extreme stomach problems for pretty much whole life. Somewhere around my late teens, I realized that milk had some connection to my stomach problems, and I voluntarily stopped drinking milk at all–but I still ate the shit out of ice cream and cheese and pretty much every other type of diary product I could find.
And then I just sorta forgot that the reason I don’t do milk was because of physical issues. Somehow I thought it was because I didn’t *like* milk.
My body is simply not as forgiving as what it used to be. So after yet another weekend of agonizing cramping, extreme bowel issues (ya’ll know what I’m talking about, right? :->) and up all night nausea, my ancient memories box popped open and reminded me that I used to spend half the night crouched over the toilet bowl–and that I had been smart enough to figure a way to deal with that shit before.
And I remembered that what helped before was getting off milk–and getting off of dairy all together might be something to consider.
Today is my second day of no diary at all. And I already am feeling noticeably better. Usually my stomach is just a huge twisting knot of burning cramps–today, however, the pain has mellowed into a soreness, as if I did too many sit ups. And just that little bit of improvement (made for the first time without prescribed antacid medication) is enough of a clue for me.
I’m doing it, I’m giving up all diary products–milk, cheese, ice cream, etc. I can see already that eventually it’s gonna be a struggle. I love to bake (try to find me a cookie recipe that doesn’t use butter!), I love to cook–and I am a 99% vegetarian that has learned to become vegetarian by substituting cheese for meat.
So, I decided to come to you all and ask for advice. What are the names of some really great dairy free cook books you have? Where is there hidden dairy in food we eat? What was the process you went through to get off dairy? What words of advice do you have?
Thanks so much for any thoughts you have to offer!
- Share
February 8th, 2009 at 6:00 pm #
People have raved about “Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World” to me (and the couple of recipes I’ve had from them have been good).
They’re not cookies, but they’re fun things to bake.
February 8th, 2009 at 6:06 pm #
This would probably be a good diet to follow, especially for my mom who suffers from diabetes. I’ll cheer you on! (and prob cut back on the dairy and sugar).
February 8th, 2009 at 6:27 pm #
So, I’m a lurker, but I thought I’d delurk to throw the names of a couple of good vegan cookbooks out there: Veganomicon by Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Romero (they’re the ones who wrote the Vegan Cupcake book) and My Sweet Vegan, by Hannah Kaminsky, which is all vegan baked goods.
There are some good vegan cookie recipes at the Post Punk Kitchen website (also run by Isa and Terry): http://theppk.com
February 8th, 2009 at 6:30 pm #
Vegweb.com has some tasty recipes; you can search vegan recipes by meal and by ingredients. I really like their Breath-Ruining Soup and the Sauteed Cabbage with Apples & Walnuts (and I sooo want to try the Chocolate Peanut Butter Silk Pie).
February 8th, 2009 at 6:47 pm #
I am already SOOOOOO in love with the post punk kitchen site!!!!!!!!! I have put all the cook books on reserve at the local library and can’t WAIT to start cooking!!!!!!!!
February 8th, 2009 at 7:47 pm #
[Cue big rambling post from the vegan.]
Yay for no dairy!!
I’m glad you’re doing this for yourself — you’ll see that you get to be much more creative with no dairy.
As for hidden dairy: most mainstream brands of margarine have whey in them, so watch out. Completely dairy free margarine (most people use Earth Balance) can be expensive, but for baking you can use oil in any recipe that calls for melted butter.
Not all fake cheese and soymilk are dairy free, either. Soya Kaas is a tasty fake cheese, but it’s got a little milk in it. There’s a brand of soymilk called 8th Continent that’s not dairy-free either, but all of the others I’ve seen are. I think some fake meat products have milk in them, too.
The convenient thing is that nowadays most food manufacturers put common allergens in bold at the bottom of ingredients lists. So, if you look and it doesn’t say CONTAINS: MILK INGREDIENTS at the bottom, you’re probably safe. (I don’t know if all of them do this, but it seems like it.)
The vegan cupcakes book is awesome. I quadrupled the vanilla cupcake recipe and made my wedding cake with it! We served it to people first and told them it was vegan later and they were amazed to the point of disbelief that you could make a cake without butter, milk, or eggs.
Cutting out dairy might be hard at first, but you’re definitely making the right decision by quitting cold turkey. I think you’ll probably just fall into the habit of not eating dairy after a while. Nobody loved milk, cheese, or ice cream more than me, but now I’m at a place where they’re, well, dead to me, for lack of a better term. I don’t even look at them or think about them in the grocery store.
Good luck!
PS. To make banana ice cream, slice up a banana or two, put the slices in the freezer so they won’t stick together, and after they freeze, blend them. It comes out of the blender like soft-serve ice cream.
February 8th, 2009 at 8:12 pm #
I generally just google “vegan whatever recipe” and use one of the first few things that come up — it’s worked pretty well so far, even for baked goods. Everyone was impressed with the vegan cupcakes I made for my wedding, and I just told them “uh, it’s the first thing that came up for ‘vegan pumpkin cake recipe’” (might have been a PPK one). Most baking recipes can be tweaked by substituting some combo of oil and fruit for milk and eggs, though I’ve yet to attempt vegan spritz cookies (seeing as regular ones are 50% sugar and 49% butter). The only thing I’ve ever failed to find a decent recipe for online has been korv, and I’m working on remedying that.
I scaled back the dairy to zero over the course of a year or so. Cooking at home without dairy was much easier than I had expected. The one trick I’d say is to not get stuck in “normal recipe minus the cheese” — food scientists have not made as much progress in cheese substitutes as they have on fake meat (though Leahy Farms makes a surprisingly good fake mac-n-cheese that’s available through mail-order if you’re craving that texture). Coconut milk is my new best friend for when I want something creamy.
The weirdest hidden dairy I’ve encountered is Funyuns, and eco-friendly toilet cleaner (though the latter won’t be an issue if your motivation is health rather than animal rights). You’ll also sometimes discover that there are surprising things that *don’t* have dairy — for example, Pillsbury cream cheese frosting is actually vegan (which I suppose may make it even less appetizing).
February 8th, 2009 at 8:47 pm #
I second what Emily said about not all soy cheese being vegan or dairy free.
I bake like a motherfucker, with earth balance, bananas, and apple sauce subbing for eggs, milk & butter.
following Stentor’s train of thought, there’s a whole bunch of junk food that is vegan by accident! oh the joys
I made Winter’s bday party themed around the peanut butter cupcakes in “vegan cupcakes take over the world.”
I don’t own many vegan cookbooks, I just google recipes and save them (I have an excel spreadsheet of recipes and a couple dozen or so google docs & word docs of recipes, me=Nerd)
side note- when J River is reading a recipe to me, he subs soy milk for milk or things like that.
February 8th, 2009 at 10:50 pm #
I use soymilk for milk in recipes, and earth’s balance for butter, although b/c it’s expensive I usually save it for when I really need hard butter. Otherwise I use canola or olive oil. It’s been years now that I’ve been dairy free and my stomach definitely thanks me for it
February 9th, 2009 at 12:28 am #
really good stuff here:
http://www.101cookbooks.com/
It’s not all dairy free, but a hell of a lot of it is. It’s also tasty and often fast. I like her emphasis on whole grains and eating a rainbow of colors of food. Hope your stomach feels better soon!
February 9th, 2009 at 12:58 am #
Another lurker – just wanted to say that I enjoy soy ice cream and you can get a few brands of rice milk in the US, I’m told. Best with your new way of eating!
February 9th, 2009 at 3:52 am #
I use a soy based butter that is reletively non-dairy… and it’s not even a hard-to-find overpriced one (Shedd’s Spread Country Crock)… The very last ingredient is whey (milk), so it is more vegetable oil and soy than anything else. It works just fine for baking.
February 9th, 2009 at 6:05 am #
http://milkmyths.org.uk/htbdf/index.php
February 9th, 2009 at 7:23 am #
someone else may have said this, but i’d stay away from eating a lot of soy dairy substitutes, because soy can be really bad for you. it can also cause those stomach problems and pain, and i heard it contains high levels of estrogen. i can’t have soy (but soy is a hidden ingredient in verything), so i use rice or almond milk. you can get rice ice cream too.
February 9th, 2009 at 9:13 am #
This website has some of the best non-dairy recipes I’ve yet tasted: http://www.fatfreevegan.com/
You can adjust the recipes if you don’t need them to be fatfree. The soups are pretty fantastic: I regularly make the North African Chickpea and Kale soup and the Pink Bean, Quinoa, and Spinach soup. Plus, they’re both pretty cheap.
The dairy-free kale and polenta lasagna is tasty, too.
I generally go to the Blog Index for recipes, because those are the ones by the author of the blog, rather than contributors.
I’m quite lactose intolerant myself. Cow cheese was the hardest thing for me to give up. I don’t do soy cheese because I don’t think it tastes very good, but generally goat and sheep cheese don’t harm me nearly as much as the cow stuff does. So when I want my fix, I eat goat cheese.
Also, in terms of ice cream: tofutti cuties are really yummy. I don’t like the taste of soy ice cream on its own, but in ice cream sandwich form, I love it. I like the mint chocolate chip kind.
Mainly the issue is getting used to new flavors. If you bite into a tofutti cutie expecting the taste of cow’s milk, it will taste weird. But once you get used to it, it’s yummy.
February 9th, 2009 at 9:26 am #
oh my gooooosh.
Maybe our bodies are on some cosmic train heading in the same direction.
While I don’t have stomach pains from dairy, I have been moving toward a meat and dairy free diet. I’m on week three and slowly decreasing it every week so I have time to research and adjust to new recipes and lifestyle.
And, absolutely, it does help you be more creative. I’m really into whole grains and eggplant and squashes and I feel FANTASTIC.
I’m so glad and grateful for this post.
Cheers, big cheers, to health and feeling as good as possible.
February 9th, 2009 at 9:46 am #
Nadia (and anyone else):
Please elaborate on the “issues” with soy. It is interesting you bring this up because I was just asking Kameelah yesterday for other alternatives because I don’t want to be “overdosing” on soy but I use it a lot since I also don’t eat much meat or dairy. Any suggestions are welcome (not to take over BFP’s needs!)
February 9th, 2009 at 9:49 am #
Coconut milk! Seriously.
There’s a brand of “ice cream” made with coconut milk (I think it’s So Delicious — they have soy milk ice cream and coconut milk ice cream) and it’s really good, and helps me not eat dairy-ice cream when I have a craving.
I’m both allergic and lactose intolerant, and I’m trying to cut out dairy AND wheat, which is just making me insane, so I feel your pain. (Sometimes literally.) Good luck with this!
February 9th, 2009 at 10:20 am #
For risks with soy, here’s what Wikipedia says about it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soybean#Health_risks
Basically, the jury is still out. There are people who are allergic to soy, but I think some of the “soy is bad for you” stuff is possibly backlash against veg*nism. The first time I saw anything about the risks of soy was in this skuzzy, alarmist pamphlet someone had given a friend of mine. (And let’s not forget “Soy is making kids gay.”)
Unfermented soy is what’s associated with the health risks. Tofu, soy milk, and soybean oil are all unfermented. Things like tempeh and miso are fine, though. I really don’t know conclusively whether soy is bad for everyone, but I do try to eat it in moderation.
As a rule, I don’t eat tofu dishes more than once or twice a week, which works out anyway, since it forces me to get a greater variety of grains and legumes into my diet instead of just replacing a slab of meat with a slab of tofu every night.
Seitan, which is expensive to buy but pretty cheap and easy to make if you can find vital wheat gluten, is a good protein, too, as long as you don’t have problems with wheat.
February 9th, 2009 at 12:49 pm #
i’m allergic to coconut milk (my mouth gets numb) but there’s also oat milk and almond milk you can use. I alternate between different milks for our family.
making your own sherbet (or maybe the correct term is sorbet, quien sabe) is so so easy with frozen fruits and a hand held blender.
February 9th, 2009 at 4:22 pm #
Thanks Emily… Kameelah recommended the Seitan too. Problem is, I am pretty sure that the fermented soy is not halal… it’s confusing, and I’m looking into it deeper. I don’t care for tofu, to be honest. I drink soy milk, use soy-based “butter”, and eat stuff like soy sausage and morning star veggie burgers… I agree that we should be careful of the motivations behind bashing soy. But I also think we shouldn’t eat an unbalanced amount of any one kind of food, and that Western culture puts too much emphasis on meat anyway… so I don’t think it’s healthy to just replace meat with soy, we also need to lessen the amount we are eating, imo. One reason that I am “big” on soy is because I am 34 and had a complete hysterectomy. I haven’t yet had serious menopause issues, and would like to keep it under control if possible, and soy is recommended for that.
I do like coconut milk… when baking sometimes I use vanilla soy milk, and other times coconut milk.
February 9th, 2009 at 4:39 pm #
Learn to cook Indian, Southeast Asian and Chinese foods – all of which use little or no dairy, and which have a lot of vegetarian/vegan dishes. For Indian food, I’m a big fan of Raghavan Iyer – cookbooks with great recipes which are fun to read, too (my favorite is a Kashmiri chickpeas-and-mushrooms dish). Chinese and Southeast Asian I haven’t really read cookbooks so much as watched “Simply Ming” a lot on PBS and picked up the flavorings (he cooks a lot of meat, but I find a lot of recipes can be adapted for beans or tofu or just veggies).
February 9th, 2009 at 5:52 pm #
You can use full fat plain yogurt, buttermilk and cultured (European style) butter in your baking and to eat, in moderation. Because it’s cultured, which is kind of like fermented, it does not have as much lactic acid. You can also substitute apple sauce, olive oil, canola oil, for butter in your baking. Those latter will be a bit different tasting, but if you go the yogurt and buttermilk way, it’s even better tasting, and rising. I don’t like fake anything so I can’t make any suggestions there.
I wouldn’t use soy, unless it’s fermented as in tempeh, if you are a woman over 40. (Not sure, but it sounds like you might be?). It is a phytoestrogen and at that time of life, your body needs less estrogen not more. It can be carcinogenic for gyne cancers.
February 9th, 2009 at 6:13 pm #
i grew up macrobiotic – no meat, no dairy, some eggs rarely and ALL whole foods ALL the time (bless my parents)- now my wife is a cheese freak and has gotten me addicted and so i’m constantly trying to quit because it doesn’t work for me…
anyway this is what i know: if health and dairy sensitivity are your main concerns, i’ve found that butter is ok for me while all other dairy is most definitely NOT – a nutritionist friend who sees a lot of people who can’t do dairy says this is common.
and about soy – again, grew up in a soy friendly household, i have found that too much soy does effect my hormone balance in unhealthy ways. so i try to avoid using a lot of soy milk and use rice milk instead. coconut sounds like another good option. i save my soy for times when its part of whole foods and then i feel like it is in more balance. (soy milk is a must though for baking as far as i am concerned – but i don’t bake a ton.)
i don’t think soy is bad, but i think it all can get a little crazy the way we do things with food in the US and i don’t think soy in everything is any different.
February 10th, 2009 at 9:33 am #
I have similar issues (though nowhere NEAR as bad as yours), and I find that goat and sheep cheese don’t affect me anywhere near as badly, and yogurt and kefir are totally fine for me to eat. You might want to try those; kefir goes great in recipes that call for cream.
February 10th, 2009 at 9:48 am #
reading this thread has been a really great experience. I am very excited by the variety and complexity and *tastiness* of the food choices that have been suggested here. I think the hardest thing for me to give up is/will be creamy sauces/soups–but as I was looking through several of the different site suggestions, I noticed there seems to be a whole world of ways to create a different type of creaminess. I’m really really excited about trying it all–I might even try to document that shit on this blog.
February 10th, 2009 at 7:23 pm #
If you’re jonesin’ for creaminess, cococut milk is definitely a great way to go (if you don’t shake up the can like it recommends, you can scoop the fattiest part off the top, use it in place of butter to saute your onions etc. in, then add the rest).
For pureed cream-of-whatever-vegetable soups, adding a high-starch potato (like russet) gives great body/creaminess without dairy.
Grinding up nuts (if you don’t have that whole other set of allergies) with a bit of water is another great way to add richness/creaminess to soups and sauces.
So great to be able to participate in a discussion of food on a political blog (breaking down those binaries!)
February 14th, 2009 at 9:19 pm #
Oh bfp, definitely chronicle your adventures!
I second the addition of potato for adding creaminess to things – I especially do this in a lot of Malaysian curries.
People rave a lot about nutritional yeast as an addition in order to simulate cheese, but I’ve never actually found it so I’ve no idea if it’s true.
February 23rd, 2009 at 5:15 am #
Oh damn, it’s a little late but I gotta get in on this! To echo gbl, are you a fan of yogurt? Cuz even though vegan food is awesome for dairy-freedom, it’s not essential. When I developed major lactose intolerance a year and a half ago (like, my whole life i’d been eating ice cream by the tub, and then of a sudden i was puking all night after ingesting any milk at all), I was SO relieved to find out that I could still eat yogurt. Aghhh, yogurt! It is a blessed staple in my life. For now, anyway. You never know what can happen.
101cookbooks.com has a lot of vegan and/or lactose-intolerance-friendly gems. This recipe is one of my absolute favorites in life. It’s what I cook to impress people. And yes, it’s got yogurt, but I’ve served it on the side with vegan friends, no problema.
I’m excited for you. Your body is going to appreciate the change. :->)