Breakfast

One of our favorite breakfasts, especially in the summer is the one pictured above. It is not the typical waffle breakfast but it is fresh, tasty and gives you a great start to the day.
I slice a piece of whole grain bread and lightly toast it. I chop tomatoes, green or red onion, celery, cucumber, green pepper, basil, & garlic and place it in a bowl (you can really use any vegetables you would like). Then I add lime juice, salt, pepper & a touch of olive oil and mix. While I am chopping, I have some water in a pot on the stove and I poach an egg. Top the bread with the tomato mixture and then the egg. It is SO yummy but it also nutritious and has a good pack of protein to get you through the morning.

Pizza

Pizza is a favorite in this household. It is requested often. Sometimes we order it and he will get his without cheese. Sometimes, if I am prepared, I will start in the morning with making the crust myself but not tonight. Today I was at the store and happened to spy a box of Jiffy Pizza Crust. I love the Jiffy products. We make the corn bread and the blueberry muffins often. They are inexpensive (around $0.50) and they actually taste really good, especially if you add a few fresh ingredients to them. So, I thought I would try the Pizza crust and I bought two boxes. When I asked what everyone might want for dinner tonight, knowing full well that they might not get what they wanted, two people voted for pizza. So, I made the crust and we topped it with our favorite toppings and half had regular mozzarella and half had soy mozzarella (his side is the side without the green peppers. Hard to tell, isn't it?).
I can't say that this is my favorite crust but it was fast, easy and tasted pretty good.
Some suggestions:
-Get your kids involved in topping the pizza. Sometimes you can get them to eat more of the veggie toppings by having them make faces or other patterns on the top!
-Change it up and try different toppings like goat cheese, fresh herbs, chicken, shrimp, whatever you might have in your fridge, pantry or garden!
-split the dough up and make individual pizzas so that everyone can have the toppings that they desire.

Chowder

This is more of a nice winter meal. I always think of it as warm comfort food on a cold night, curled up in front of a fire eating a nice bowl of Chowder with some crusty bread.
Well, I decided to make it in July. I am attending a baby shower for a friend and they asked that instead of gifts you bring a meal that can be frozen. It is their second baby and they already have all of the baby gear that is needed. I think this is a great idea! No one has the energy to cook after having a baby.
So, I thought, what can I make that I can freeze and that we can eat today. In searching my freezer, I found a ham bone that I had packaged carefully and stuck in the freezer for a later date and that later date was today. I was going to make ham, corn, potato chowder and here is how I did it...
First I took the ham bone and put it in a rather large pot and covered it with water, placed it on a medium heat stove and let it boil there for about 2 hours. This makes a delicious stock and base for our chowder. I removed the bone and cut off any ham and added it to the broth. You could just use chicken broth if you don't have a ham bone, that certainly would be faster but might not be as tasty.
Saute 1 large chopped onion and 2 cloves of chopped garlic. Add onion mixture to broth and one can of corn with liquid or 6 ears of fresh corn cut off the cob (if you are going go with the cob, I would suggest that you cook it first and then cut the corn off). Cut about 10 small potatoes or 5 large potatoes into small cubes and add. Then let it all cook together until the potatoes are tender.
Now, you can leave it like this and call it a soup. It is just as yummy and probably a little healthier for you but if you want it to be more of a chowder then keep reading.
Place 2-3 tbs of butter in a small pan and melt then add 2-3 tbs of flour and mix until well combined. Ladel some of the hot soup into the butter and flour and mix. By doing this you will hopefully eliminate the possibility of lumps in your chowder. Add mixture to soup and mix well. Add some Rice milk (optional) and let it all thicken.
I actually don't like a super thick chowder and so I don't add too much of the flour mixture. If you like it thick, add more!
Salt & Pepper to taste and add some Tabasco Chipotle Sauce if you like a little heat.
It makes a lot so eat some now and freeze some for later, maybe for a cold fall night.

lunch

I know this blog is primarily about dinners but today I was feeling a bit uninspired by what to make for lunch. Our family takes a nice walk to the farmers market every Saturday and buys fresh produce, grass-feed beef, goat cheese (which he can eat), sorbet, whatever the farmers brought that looks good! Yesterday I came home with two beautiful ripe Hanover tomatoes. So today in my attempt to get inspired by what I had in my fridge or on my counter, I saw the tomatoes and they were calling my name. But what to make with a tomato that is quick and yummy because at this point it was 11:45am. Then I remembered that I had some bacon in the fridge and some mixed greens.

PERFECT...a BLT!

nothing like a BLT with fresh local tomatoes, add a slice of local cantaloupe and some chips... a yummy lunch and there is no diary involved! He ate it up and was energized for some more yard work!

Lasagna

i know what most of you are thinking...
lasagna?

dairy free?

really? i bet that tastes nasty.

WRONG!
it is dairy free but it tastes wonderful and this is coming from a women with a pretty sophisticated palette who happens to also love lasagna. this was a no-no in our house for a long time. i never bought it, made it or really even had it in the house. wasn't fair to the hubby. i would just order it at restaurants and try to get my lasagna fix in when i could.
one day i was craving some lasagna and i knew that we weren't going to venture out with the two kids for dinner at a nice italian restaurant. so, i decided it was time. he had some parmesan & some mozzarella chese in the fridge and i had picked up some no-cook lasagna noodles the last time i had been to trader joes. i was motivated to create a delicious dairy free lasagna. it took some time and a little bit of trial but i think i accomplished it!
i wish i had a picture of it because it actually looked really pretty (if you can call lasagna pretty) but we ate it too fast to capture a shot. next time i make it i will be sure to take a picture and post it.
here is the recipe. i hope you try it. does take a little time but i think it is worth it!
all of the items in the recipe i bought at kroger.

no cook lasagna noodles
1 bag of dairy free shredded mozzarella flavored cheese
non dairy parmesan cheese
baby spinach leaves
flat leaf parsley

tomato sauce-
1 lb ground beef
2 Italian Mild sausage links (casing taken off)
1 onion, chopped
10 bella mushrooms chopped
1 can of diced tomatoes
1 can of stewed tomatoes
3 garlic cloves, chopped
salt & pepper to taste

bechamel Sauce-
3 Tbsp butter
3 Tbsp flour
1 cup of original rice milk (heated)
1 tsp garlic powder
salt & pepper
a pinch of ground nutmeg

saute beef, sausage, onions, mushrooms & garlic until meat is browned and vegetables are tender. add tomatoes (with juice from can) and let simmer. salt and pepper to taste.
in a separate pot, melt butter and add flour until they are nicely combined. slowly add heated rice milk to the mixture. wisk until nicely combined and slightly thickened. add salt, pepper, garlic powder and nutmeg to taste.
place a layer of lasagna noodles in the bottom of a baking dish then spoon over a layer of tomato sauce, spread thin layer of uncooked fresh spinach and then a layer of bechamel. sprinkle with mozzarella and parmesan. repeat two more times to make a total of three layers. sprinkle the top with some fresh chopped flat leaf parsley and then bake in a 350 degree oven for about one hour.
ENJOY!

Welcome!

hi all. i am a 32 year old stay at home mother of two very active boys and the wife of an amazing man who happens to be allergic to dairy. it all started in college. we used to order pizza and cheese sticks late night together and pig out before crashing. we would make yummy cheesy food together and split cheesecake when we went out to dinner. all of this changed when he decided to enter in a food eating contest. what a mistake! he irritated his esophagus so badly that after that any time he ate anything with dairy he would get violently ill (i won't get into the details) and it got worse every time it happened.
i love to cook. it brings me joy to feed people good food and see their faces when they take the first bite. i try to fix a nice dinner every night. which doesn't always happen but i try. it became increasingly difficult after the allergy started. i would basically stick to a pretty plain meal of meat, vegetable and starch. nothing exciting and certainly nothing inspirational.
finally, i went grocery shopping and found all sorts of products that were dairy free. i was a tad bit skeptical of how they were going to taste. i like real cream cheese & sour cream & every type of cheese imaginable. of course he was the guinea pig. i would not try any of them for a long time. why should i have to suffer with fake dairy products just because of his allergy? he said that he loved the yogurt and was so pleased that he could finally eat yogurt again (or at least a yogurt substitute). he tried the cream cheese and the shredded cheese and he liked them all.
the next test was cooking with them.
this blog is a document of our daily dinners and my trials and tribulations Cooking Dairy Free!