Dairy Free

I'm in about week six of trying to eat and live dairy free.  Did I mention I'm from Wisconsin?  Dairy-free sucks.  But, slowly, I'm learning to do it and to even enjoy it sometimes.  Of course I'm looking forward to the days when I can enjoy some cheese and crackers and not feel like I'm ruining all my chances when, like today, I had a slice two slices of pizza.  C'mon, it was Papa Murphy's stuffed pizza.  We were watching the Packer game and I couldn't resist.

Tonight, I tried to make up for it.  I'm not sure that I've counteracted the effects yet...but I sure found a good recipe.  One of the other dietary instructions I have is to increase my consumption of green leafy vegetables.  I'm not super picky -- I could easily throw together a spinach salad or something and get in a ton of the vitamins and nutrients I need.

The problem is that in my diagnosis in Traditional Chinese Medicine I am to avoid all "cold" foods.  You'd be surprised as what foods are listed as "cold," and what that requirement entails.  No foods directly out of the refrigerator.  No cold drinks (I cheat on this one a little bit -- I take the drink out of the refrigerator awhile before I'm going to drink it).  Right now, for example, I'm enjoying a moderately cold glass of chocolate almond milk.  Just an aside -- if any of you readers are sensitive to lactose or are looking for lactose-free alternatives, I highly recommend this (especially if you like chocolate milk).  I cannot taste a difference from "regular" chocolate milk, and there's over double the calcium.  No cucumbers, lettuce, cold spinach...the list goes on and on.

So, I have to find ways to get these nutrients in warm foods that I can tolerate.  One of my guilty pleasures has always been spinach artichoke dip.  Can we say yum?  You may have noticed, however, that there is usually a lot of cheese in the aforementioned dip.  So, I did what anyone in today's world does (at least I think this is what they would do).  I went to my #1 resource:  Google.  And, lo and behold I found a recipe that was dairy-free.  There's an interesting ingredient though, cashew cream.  You soak raw cashews in water overnight, drain them, and then put them in a food processor or blender with 1 cup purified water.  The result is a creamy looking concoction that has very little taste or smell...but adds a tremendous amount of texture (similar to that of dairy products).  I'm in love.

You can find the recipe here.  Within the recipe, there's a link to the cashew cream.  However, if you don't find it for any reason, click here.  Hope you enjoy!

And now, I bid you all goodnight.  I'm off to do my fertility yoga and then dream sweet dreams.  Until tomorrow, my friends!