Cutting Out Dairy - some pracical tips.....

This has been the hardest thing I have ever had to do in my life. I LOVE CHEESE!! In fact I am sure cheese is the main reason I find myself in the grip of gall stones. When I cut out dairy i managed quite well the first few weeks without thinking of cheese too much., but as time went on I began to dream about cheese, pizzas, or melted goats cheese, baked brie with red currant sauce.... you name it. So I decided to explore the world of vegan cheese.

Vegan cheese is of course NOT actually cheese, it is a variety of things masquerading as cheese. Not always the healthiest things either I am sure. So I treated it as an occasional treat. If you are a cheese freak like me and in this position here are a few tips.

Vegan Cream cheese seems to be the most successful of cheese sustitutes, and you can also use it to make reasonable cheesy, creamy sauces too. My favourite was Sheese - they had a good plain and also garlic and herb flavour. The least successful cheese substitutes I found were pretend cheddars.... awful!! they just tasted of old socks, and not in a good stilton blue cheese way - but in a horendous waxy grim sort of way. It was wholly unsuccessful. One surprise treat was cheezely's Blue Cheese sustitute. It looked like polyfill gone hard - but it actually melted - a thing most vegan cheese resolutely refuses to do. I found it was bearable over a salad a little warmed. Or over some toast with some carrot sticks. I even made a blue cheese dip from it which was pretty decent.

Apart from cheese there are the obvious mik, cream and yoghurt. Everyone has thier own favourites. For me I love my cappucinos. After some experimentation I have discovered that Soy Milk makes the best cappucinos. Its not half bad and now i barely notice the difference. If your local coffee shop does not stock it - just keep asking if they do soy milk, and eventually they will relent. Most chain coffee shops have it and if not its worth asking them why not - sometimes they will even run out and get some - its happened to me!

The only other real time I have milk is on my cereal. For this I prefer Rice Milk. I have found it goes off before I can use it all though. So I buy small packs (waitrose stock them) or even mini individual cartons. That way I am not constantly throwing it away, which I ended up doing the first few weeks. There are also options like oat milk and coconut milk, even hemp milk.

For Cream I have two recommendations I work well with. Firstly is Provamel's Soy cream. I have actually been using it long before the gallstones as its a great one to have in the cupbaord. Great for cooking with too! Higly recommended. The other one I have discovered is oatly. Its an oat milk cream, really good for cooking and also for desserts. I have also fund the coconut milk or coconut cream great for cooking with too, and for making fabulous dairy free desserts! Sometime I'll share my coconut ice cream recepie - it amazing!

Yoghurt wise. These days it easy to find the fresh ones in the yoghurt aisle now. These are so much better than the pastuerised ones. I find the Alpro Soy one very good and I use it in lieu of yoghurt or sour cream. Great for dips or on cereal.

I'd also recommend Alpro soy's custard. They do large packs of vanilla and smaller packs of vanilla, chocolate, forest fruits or caramel.