Never cook with a whipping cream substitute!!

Deeply unsuccessful cooking session the other day. Really, really bad..... I was trying to make a creamy chicken and brocolli bake - dairy free. I was using up the leftovers from a lovely roasted chicken from the day before. It is a delicious dish that I often use for using up leftovers. Back in England I'd have substituted the cream in the sauce for Provamel Soya Cream or Oatley Oat Cream and I would have added a fat dollop of tofutti soya cream cheese to give that creamy texture - and really its hardly and different to the real thing - the only difference is I don't end up lying in agony on the bed with a Gallstone attack because of the dairy in it.

Here in the States I have been searching for the right substitute to use for dairy cream. I have trudged around Trader Joes, Whole Foods and Sunflower Foods feeling a lot like J.R. Hartley! Everyone I asked said they had nothing like that. Only creamers for coffee which are mostly flavoured, and are not really thick enough - more like a slightly thicker whole milk. So I spied a soy whipping cream substitute and thought I'd give it a try. It tasted OK cold, but when I added it to my sauce things changed. As it cooked a really strange smell began wafting through the house. At first I did not realise it was the food and I kept looking around to see if the cat had been sick or something. By the time I went down stairs and realised the smell was emerging from the oven the smell of vomit was so strong it literally took a day and a half to exorcise it from the house. It was awful... awful... awful...

 Never cook with a whipping cream substitute its bad - really bad when heated!! I made something else and stuck that int he oven and still the house and the food smelt of it - so two meals got binned and my wise wise husband came home to a shreiking wife and promptly threw us all in the car and took us to Sweet Tomatoes for dinner. Thanks goodness for Sweet Tomatoes!!!