I never realized just how much I love milk until recently I found myself forced to go dairy-free. However, I love my daughter so much more so said let’s do this.
I started off with a trip to Whole Foods to see what sort of dairy-free options they have readily available (note the ghee in the photo above is not dairy free – someone led me astray on that one so ignore that!). And I learned just how many things have dairy in them. Who knew? Things like certain types of:
- Bread
- Spices
- Single serving oatmeal
- Baking mixes (pancakes, cakes, breads, etc)
- Deli meat
The trip to the store took so much time since I had to read the side of all of the packages. Pro tip: bring your glasses as you’ll be reading lots of ingredient lists in tiny font that you need to be able to see!
When I first started, I was so in shock I couldn’t think through the easy options you can incorporate into your regular diet. I’ve found it’s possible to do this and not have to go completely crazy. Here are some ideas to get you started:
- Non-dairy prepped soups with non-dairy grilled cheese (I like the Pacific Foods soups in cartons and the Chao Creamery cheese slices in their “creamy original”, as they melt nicely like normal cheese)
- Salads with lots of proteins (meats, nuts)
- Peanut butter & jelly or peanut butter & honey (quick and easy prep and the peanut butter makes this a filling and easy go to)
- Hummus and carrots
- Roasted veggies (prepped in mass quantities to reheat as needed)
And of course, I was concerned about sweets. I’ll share some recipes in a subsequent post but below are some ready made options I’ve enjoyed. While I don’t love not being able to grab whatever catches my eye when I’m out, I did enjoy the opportunity to help support some of these smaller companies as a side benefit to this “adventure”.
- Some people think vanilla / vanilla cupcakes are boring. I’m the opposite. If they’re done right, I love them. I really liked theTreasure Mills School Safe vanilla cupcakes, available at select Whole Foods, Wegmann’s and Wal-Mart. These cupcakes are appropriately named as they’re peanut-free, tree nut-free and dairy-free.
- These by Better Bites are like mini Hostess cupcakes. So good! Only negative here was the price tag. This little package was $9.99. Not awful, but not great either. I found these at Whole Foods.
- I think I started to crave random things just because I couldn’t have them — and whoopie pies made this list. I found these Divvies whoopie pie cookies at King’s Market .
It’s looking like I may not have to continue this as perhaps Baby L doesn’t have a dairy allergy after all (TBC but fingers crossed) but I’ll continue to share some of the best products and recipes I tried so far over the coming weeks. I’ve started a board on Pinterest too that has a lot of the recipes we have in the hopper.
Have a dairy-free go to fave to share? Drop it in the comments!
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